04 December 2016•Update: 08 December 2016
By Ainur Rohmah
TUBAN, Indonesia
Indonesian teams have recovered body parts in waters east of Sumatra island where authorities believe a police plane crashed with 13 people onboard.
The head of the Search and Rescue Agency said Sunday that a rescue boat also recovered aircraft debris including a plane tire and pieces of a fuselage from waters off Batam island, where the missing plane was headed when it lost contact Saturday morning.
"This morning, three bags [containing] body parts that were not intact were handed over to the national police," Bambang Soelistyo was quoted by kompas.com as saying.
He said that officials had determined the coordinates where the plane is believed to have crashed.
"We have successfully determined the point of the crash since we have seen oil spills suspected to be aircraft fuel,” he added.
Police have revised the number of people onboard the plane from 15 to 13, saying that the plane had been carrying 16 when it traveled from Jakarta to Bangka island, where three passengers got off board.
The plane later lost contact around halfway through its voyage from Bangka to Batam.
Search efforts are ongoing.
Indonesia has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered major disasters over the past year, many of them involving air force aircraft.
In July, three people were killed and three others injured when a military helicopter crashed in the island of Java, damaging two houses near the city of Yogyakarta.
In February, four people died when a military plane crashed into a house in East Java province.
The following month, a military helicopter went down during an operation in troubled Poso town in Sulawesi island, killing 13 personnel.
