Families of the victims from an Indonesia plane crash grieve the loss of their loved ones.
Authorities had hoped initially to use helicopters to transport the remains from Sunday’s plane crash in eastern Indonesia from the site in Papua province, but bad weather meant the bodies had to be carried out of the jungle on foot.
Hundreds of locals and rescuers were involved in the arduous task of transporting the bodies about 15km to the settlement of Oksibil, the intended destination of the Trigana Air plane.
Captain Beni Sumaryanto, Trigana Air’s service director of operations, said all the bodies had been recovered and had now been flown to the Papuan capital of Jayapura.
“They are now in the police hospital at Jayapura for identification,” he said. “After that, they will be given to the families.”
The ATR 42-300 plane had set off from Jayapura on what was supposed to be a 45-minute flight to Oksibil, but lost contact 10 minutes before landing as it sought to descend in heavy cloud and rain.
When rescuers reached the crash site two days later, they found the twin-turboprop aircraft in pieces scattered across a fire-blackened clearing, and the bodies of the 49 passengers and five crew members who had been on board.
Investigators are still combing the crash site for one of the plane’s flight data recorders after having recovered the aircraft’s other “black box”, the cockpit voice recorder, earlier this week.
The devices should provide vital information about the cause of the crash.
A team of three investigators from France’s BEA agency, which investigates air accidents, and four technical advisers from ATR, a European plane-maker based in France, have arrived in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to help with the investigation.
The tragedy was merely the latest air accident in Indonesia, which has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered major disasters in recent months, including the crash of an AirAsia plane in December resulting in the loss of 162 lives. – AFP