Indonesia finds bodies of 10 passengers on crashed surveillance plane

Indonesian rescuers on Friday had found the bodies of 10 passengers on a fishery surveillance plane that went missing in Indonesia's South Sulawesi province at the weekend, the country's search and rescue agency said.

The ATR 42-500 turboprop owned by aviation group Indonesia Air Transport (IAT) lost contact with air traffic control on Saturday at about 1:30pm local time (0530 GMT) around the Maros region in South Sulawesi.

There were seven crew members and three passengers on board the plane, which was chartered by Indonesia's Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to conduct air surveillance on its fisheries. The passengers were ministry staff members.

Andi Sultan, an official at South Sulawesi's rescue agency, said through tears during a video statement that authorities found the ninth and tenth bodies early on Friday, adding that the evacuation process was still ongoing.

The agency said separately on its Instagram account that 10 victims have been found.

Local rescuers previously discovered the wreckage of the plane in different locations around Mount Bulusaraung in the Maros region, about 1,500 km (930 miles) northeast of the sprawling island nation's capital, Jakarta.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), which probes transport accidents, is currently investigating the contents of the recently-found black box, its chief told local media this week.

It was Indonesia's first deadly crash involving the ATR 42, manufactured by Franco-Italian planemaker ATR, LDOF.MI, in more than a decade. In 2015, a Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 crashed into a mountainside in Indonesia's Papua region, killing all 54 people on board.

A Boeing 737-500 jet operated by airline Sriwijaya Co crashed into the Java sea in 2021, killing 62 people.