12 survive Indonesia plane crash

Twelve people survived when a plane with 102 on board crashed in heavy rain into the mountains of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, officials said after an overnight search for the wreckage of the budget airline jet.

“The plane’s location has been found and 12 people from the 102 people on board have survived,” said Adam Air rescue spokesman Capt Hartono.

“We are going to evacuate them to Makassar,” he said, referring to South Sulawesi’s provincial capital about 1,400 km east of Jakarta.

Ninety people were killed in the Adam Air crash, the second transport disaster this week in the sprawling archipelago. The manifest showed three passengers as non-Indonesians. The US embassy in Jakarta said they were Americans.

“They say the victims would be moved to Makassar but I could not find out anything about my relatives,” said Lely Jasman, 41, who was among a crowd of anxious relatives awaiting information from the Adam Air office at Makassar airport.

“Hopefully, they are among the 12 people I heard had survived,” said the civil servant from Makassar, whose uncle and cousin were on the plane.

No airline official was available for comment in Makassar.

First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, told Radio Elshinta an air force plane had spotted the wreckage of the Boeing 737-400.

“The plane was found around 20 kilometres from Polewali (town) in the mountains. The weather is clear,” Suyanto said.

The crash site is a five-hour drive through rough terrain from Polewali. The hospital in Polewali said it was expecting 12 survivors based on reports from local villagers who had reached the area.

Idin Arifin, team leader from the national search andrescue agency, said the wreckage was tucked four kilometres away from the edge of a remote hamlet.

“We cannot even see the smoke because the area is covered by jungles and the location is rather steep. Rescuers from the agency, military and police are on their way and we hope we can conduct evacuation today,” he said from a command post 18 km from the site.

Setyo Rahardjo, head of Indonesia’s national transportsafety committee, said experts have been sent to find the plane’s blackbox.

REUTERS