Crash investigators today recovered two black box flight recorders from the charred remains of the Air France Concorde which crashed outside Paris.

French legal experts were also beginning the grim task of examining the bodies of the 113 victims, mainly German tourists, to establish their identities as relatives prepared to fly into the French capital.

Air France said the crash appeared to have been caused by a fire in one of the engines at the moment of take-off. Investigators, including three British experts from the Air Accident Investigation Branch, were trying to determine what started the fire.

Early today, the French Ministry of Transportation said the plane's two flight recorders, which were damaged during the crash, had been found at the crash site near the village of Gonesse. Both the recorders will be taken to an accident investigation centre in Paris to be decoded.

A British woman was among those injured by the plane as it demolished the two-star Hotelissimo in Gonesse, killing 109 passengers and crew and four people on the ground in an impact one witness described as "like an atomic bomb".

The woman, who has not been named, was slightly injured and was treated in hospital and discharged, the Foreign Office said.

Air France grounded all Concorde flights while investigations continued, but British Airways was due to make a decision later today whether its Concorde flights would resume.

Ninety-six of the passengers on Flight AF4590 were from Germany, 17 from the town of Moenchengladbach, on the border with the Netherlands. There were two Danes, one Austrian and one American, a retired Air France employee.

Three of the victims were children.

The European passengers on board were all en route from Charles de Gaulle airport to New York where they were due to join a luxury cruise liner heading for the Caribbean.

Air France said the crash did not appear to be linked to a problem of hairline cracks in Concorde wings revealed earlier this week.

"There were no hairline cracks in this Concorde, but the accident could have resulted from fire in the engine on takeoff," a company statement said.

Witnesses described the stricken jet trailing a sheet of flame hundreds of feet long from one of its Olympus engines before smashing into the hotel, sending a plume of smoke 1,000ft high into the afternoon sky and scattering hot debris over a wide area.

The Queen, President Bill Clinton and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, have each sent messages of sympathy to French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.