MOSCOW, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Russia and Armenia mourned for the victims of the Airbus A-320 Armenian jet crash on Friday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

    The tricolor national flags of Russia and Armenia were hoisted half-mast on the buildings of the state institutions of both countries.

    The Russian tricolor, raised for the first time next to the Kremlin, at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexandrovsky Garden, was also elevated half-mast. The mourning will not interfere with the planned solemn functions, timed for Victory Dayon Tuesday.

    The Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline belonging to the air company Armavia crashed into the Black Sea near the southern Russian resort town of Sochi at around 2:15 a.m. local time (2215 GMT Tuesday), killing all the 113 people on board, including six children and eight crew. The remnants sank to a depth more than six hundred meters below the sea surface.

    The national flags of the Russian Federation were hoisted half-mast in Sochi, too. All the culture institutions and TV companies of the city have canceled their entertainment programs. The same was done in the entire Krasnodar Territory of the south Russia region.

    A steamship carrying relatives and near ones of the crash victims will lower wreaths onto the surface of the sea at the place, where the tragedy occurred.

    According to the latest reports, 53 bodies of the crash victims were found in the sea on Thursday. Thirty-seven of them were identified. Twenty-six identified bodies were flown from Adler to Armenia's capital city of Yerevan late Thursday night.

    According to a list of passengers submitted to the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations, all the passengers were of Armenian descent, but 26 of them were citizens of the Russian Federation.

    Former Armenian Interior minister and KGB -- the state security committee-- chairman Major-General Usik Arutyunyan was among the victims killed in the plane crash.

    On decision of Sochi Mayor Viktor Kolodyazhny, the Municipal Council will pay 500,000 roubles (18,000 U.S. dollars) to each family of the crash victims, which will get a compensation worth 20,000 U.S. dollars from insurance company too.

    "The city will not forget their children, too. We shall help them get an education, including higher school professions," Kolodyazhny stressed. Enditem

Black boxes of crashed Armenian jet found

Police officers and officials look at the wreckage of Armenian air company Armavia's crashed Airbus A-320, May 3, 2006. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

    MOSCOW, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Two black boxes of Armenia's Airbus A-320 which crashed off the Russian Black Sea coast on Wednesday morning have been spotted by French experts, an official from Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said on Thursday.

    "French experts finished their work by finding black boxes. They claim to have spotted two black boxes at a depth of 680 meters not far away from each other," Lieut. Gen. Sergei Kudinov, chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry's southern branch, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.