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Human remains and debris of Sriwijaya Airplane located

News Agencies 10 January 2021, 12:08 IST

Human remains and debris of Sriwijaya Airplane located

Human remains and plane wreckage have been pulled from the crash site of an Indonesian passenger jet on Sunday, reported CNN.

Indonesian Navy divers on Sunday found wreckage from flight SJY 182 after locating a signal from the aircraft's fuselage. Commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto, said that he is confident that the Navy Rigel Warship has located the plane's fuselage.

As well as debris from the plane, Indonesian police said they have received two body bags, one containing items belonging to victims such as pants and shirts, and another containing body parts, Jakarta Police spokesperson Yusri Yunus told CNN.

Divers retrieved pieces of debris from the site that is the same colour as the Sriwijaya Air aircraft, Air Chief Marshal Tjahjanto said at a press conference from the John Lie Warship.

A plane registration number, wheels from the landing gear, and life vests have also been uncovered, Tjahjanto said, adding that visibility and conditions in the water were good, and the search for victims continues, reported CNN.

A massive search operation was underway in Indonesia to find the wreckage of a Sriwijaya Air plane that crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from the capital Jakarta on Saturday with 62 people on board.

Sriwijaya Air flight 182 -- a Boeing 737-500 -- was heading from Jakarta to the city of Pontianak, on the Indonesian island of Borneo, when it lost contact at 2:40 pm local time (2:40 am ET), 11 nautical miles north of Jakarta's Soekarno--Hatta International Airport. Four minutes into the flight, and amid heavy rains, the plane dropped 10,000 feet in less than a minute before disappearing from the radar, according to the global flight tracking service Flightradar24.

Earlier, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) informed that it had found several pieces of debris believed to be from the missing plane but bad weather and poor visibility had hampered the search overnight, reported CNN.

In addition, the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) teams have begun an investigation into the cause of the crash.

Meanwhile, police in Jakarta has set up a command post at the Kramat Jati Police Hospital to identify the crash victims and search for family members, Indonesian news agency Antara reported on Sunday.

Sriwijaya Air, a low-cost airline and Indonesia's third-largest carrier, transports more than 950,000 passengers per month from its Jakarta hub to 53 destinations within Indonesia and three regional countries.

Earlier in June 2018, it was removed from the European Union's list of banned air carriers, 11 years after it was placed on that list, reported CNN.

Indonesia earlier has been questioned many times about the safety standards of air travel; this crash has again rocked Indonesia's burgeoning airline industry.

Earlier too, in October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 people on board. In 2014, Indonesian AirAsia Flight 8501 claimed the lives of all 162 people on board after crashing into the Java Sea, while flying from Surabaya to Singapore.

And in the year before that, Lion Air was involved in two accidents. A Boeing 737 missed the runway on landing and crashed into the sea near Bali, forcing passengers to swim or wade to safety, while another Boeing 737 collided with a cow while touching down at Jalaluddin Airport in Gorontalo on the island of Sulawesi.

In 2007, the European Union banned all 51 Indonesian airlines from its airspace after a Garuda Indonesia plane with 140 people on board overshot the runway in Yogyakarta in March and burst into flames, killing 21 people on board, reported CNN.

(ANI)

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