An aircraft with 54 people on board crashed in Indonesia's
remote and mountainous region of Papua on Sunday, a government official said,
the latest in a string of aviation disasters in the Southeast Asian nation.
"The latest information is that the Trigana aircraft
that lost contact has been found at Camp 3, Ok Bape district in the Bintang
Mountains regency," Air Transportation director General Suprasetyo
told reporters. "Residents provided information that the aircraft crashed
into Tangok mountain."
There was no immediate word on whether anyone survived.
Trigana Air Operations
director Beni Sumaryanto said that within 30 minutes of hearing
that the aircraft was missing, the airline sent another plane to scour the same
flight path but it had found nothing because of bad weather, local media
reported.
According to the official BASARNAS Twitter account,
the aircraft, a short-haul ATR 42-300 airliner belonging
to Trigana Air Service and built in France and Italy, was carrying 44
adult passengers, five crew and five children and infants.
The plane was flying
between Jayapura's Sentani Airport and Oksibil, due south
of Jayapura, the capital of Papua province.
Air transport is commonly used in Papua, Indonesia's
easternmost province, where land travel is often impossible.
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