MOSCOW, Aug 26 (AFP) - The recording devices recovered from two planes that simultaneously crashed in Russia are damaged and it remains unclear when the black boxes can be repaired, a Russian official said Thursday.
"We have to determine how badly the tapes are damaged before we can say when they can be read," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an official with the government aviation committee, Oleg Yermolov, as saying.
The comments came amid a furious media scramble for information on the twin plane crashes, which killed 89 people on the eve of controversial presidential elections in Chechnya, shaking Russia.
Russian officials said they were not excluding any theory, including a hijacking or a bombing attack, or possibly bad weather conditions or pilot error.
There have been conflicting reports of blasts on at least on of the planes, with some officials saying that they could have occurred because the planes were spinning out of control for undetermined reasons.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday demanded "honest" information from his government during the investigation, after urgently flying back to Moscow from his Black Sea resort.
The incident came days before a controversial election in separatist Chechnya that some rebel forces have vowed to disrupt, but no one has claimed responsibility.