KINSHASA, September 4, 2008 (AFP) - The bodies of 17 passengers have been recovered the wreckage of a plane crash, close to Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (RDC), a UN spokesman told AFP.

'We have recovered 17 bodies of the victims and we are going to transport them to Bukavu' said Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the UN mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.

MONUC said the plane's flight data recorder had also been recovered.

The plane was carrying the 15 UN and private aid workers and two crew when it slammed into a mountain about 15 kilometers (eight miles) northwest of the city of Bukavu, the capital of Sud-Kivu province, on Monday.

Air Serv, a US-based company that chartered the jet, said in a statement on Tuesday that there were 'no known survivors.'

The victims included a Canadian member of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), an Indian and a Frenchman employed by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, and a national of neighbouring Congo who worked for Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF - Doctors Without Borders).

The others on the plane, a Beechcraft 1900C flying from Kinshasa to Bukavu,, were all from the DRC.

According to the UN, four worked for the UNDP, three for the non-government organisation Handicap International and four were civil servants working in the DRC parliament.

The circumstances of the accident are still unknown. The weather was reported to have been particularly bad in the Sud-Kivu region on Monday.