The first bodies of 54 people killed when a plane went down in eastern Indonesia were Wednesday carried from the remote crash site after bad weather hampered efforts to airlift them. Authorities also revealed rescuers were still looking for one of the Trigana Air plane’s two “black boxes”, the flight data recorder, after initially saying that both had been found.
The remains of 17 people who died when the plane crashed during a short flight in bad weather Sunday were taken by hundreds of locals and rescuers through jungle and over mountains in Papua province.
The bodies arrived at the settlement of Oksibil, the intended destination of the ATR 42-300 plane, after a gruelling, hours-long journey. Four bodies had already been flown on to Papua’s capital Jayapura while the other 13 were still in the local hospital, transport ministry spokesman J. A. Barata told AFP. The recovery effort was halted at nightfall and will resume Thursday.
