Beijing, Mar 24 (IANS): The black box recovered from the China Eastern Airlines passenger plane that crashed into a mountain in Guangxi region earlier this week, is believed to be the cockpit voice recorder, according to an aviation official.

The exterior of the black box has been severely damaged, but its data storage unit is relatively complete despite some damage, Xinhua news agency quoted Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, as saying to reporters late Wednesday night.

The black box is being sent to Beijing for decoding, he added.

The plane carrying 132 people crashed on Monday in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou.

No survivors have been found so far.

Downloading and decoding the data will take some time, and the process could be prolonged further if the internal storage unit is impaired, Zhu said.

The official said that investigators will continue to search for the flight data recorder, the other black box, to provide a more complete picture of what caused the Boeing 737-800 to crash.

Meanwhile, rescuers have been braving the rain to clear landslide debris and waterlogging at the crash site.

It has been raining continuously since Wednesday evening and although rescuers had cleared landslide debris by Thursday morning, the rain-soaked soil continued to make travel on foot difficult.

They have laid bamboo frames on the ground to facilitate the rescue work.

In the core area of the accident site, excavators and other equipment were also ready to resume work.

The regional meteorological bureau at 8 a.m. Thursday forecast small to moderate rainfall in Tengxian over the next 12 hours, with accumulated rainfall of 5 to 8 mm.

The weather is expected to continue to adversely affect the rescue work.