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An Indonesian military transport plane that was given to the country by Australia this year crashed in bad weather on Sunday killing all 13 people on board, officials said.
The Hercules C-130 plane was carrying 12 tonnes of food supplies and cement from Timika to Wamena in Papua, a distance of about 200km, when it crashed just minutes before its scheduled landing, according to the air force chief of staff, Agus Supriatna.
Three pilots and 10 personnel were aboard the plane. Bad weather and low clouds in Wamena, the capital of the mountainous district of Jayawijaya, were believed to be factors in the crash, the deputy air force chief of staff, Hadiyan Sumintaatmadja, told a media conference.
“The tower in Wamena spotted the plane, but it was not certain that the plane saw the runway,” he said. He did not rule out the plane having hit a mountain.
An investigation was under way. Sumintaatmadja said the plane had been airworthy and had 69 flying hours left until its next routine maintenance.
The flight took off from Timika at 5.35am and crashed about four minutes before it was scheduled to land in Wamena. Television footage showed rescuers and locals at the crash site, where they recovered the victims’ bodies.
Another military Hercules plane flew to Wamena to take the bodies back to its home base in Malang in East Java province.
It was the third serious air accident in Indonesia in less than a month. On 24 November, a Bell 412 EP army helicopter crashed in Indonesia’s part of Borneo island, killing three people. Nine days latera police plane with 13 people on board crashed into the seaon the way to the island of Batam, near Singapore.
(THE GUARDIAN)
