All nine bodies from the wreckage of a U.S. military C-130 transport plane that crashed in Albania early Friday were recovered by the afternoon, officials said in Tirana. Albanian search teams earlier recovered four bodies and five others were found inside the plane wreckage on the Driza Mountain, some 80 kilometres southeast of the capital Tirana. The MC-130H Hercules took off from Tirana's Mother Teresa Airport Thursday for a night training mission with the Albanian military, the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart confirmed. It crashed at 10.50 p.m. (2050 GMT) after sending an SOS signal, the chief of the Albanian army general staff, Pellumb Qazimi, told an afternoon press conference in Tirana. "U.S. soldiers who lost their lives were on the joint training mission with Albanian army," he said. The cause of the crash is under investigation, said U.S. officials dispatched to Albania after the incident. --More 2214 Local Time 1914 GMT
