All 18 people aboard a plane that crashed on Indonesia's Sumatra island were found dead Saturday, an official said, after two days of hampered efforts to reach the remote jungle site. Hopes that some on board the aircraft might be alive had been raised when a victim's mother reported that her daughter had called her from the plane after the crash Thursday, and aerial photos showed the main cabin largely intact.
But after rescuers finally reached the site, national search and rescue operations head Sunarbowo Sandi announced: "We received a radio response from our team on the ground that all 18 people on the plane had died. "The passengers were still in their seats."
The turboprop plane owned by Nusantara Buana Air took off from Medan in North Sumatra on Thursday morning heading for the nearby province of Aceh. But it sent a distress signal soon afterwards and crashed at 1,100 metres (3,600 feet) in the mountainous Bohorok area about 70 kilometres (40 miles) north-west of Medan.
The weather and rough terrain had for two days prevented rescuers from reaching the crash location by foot and by helicopter, forcing three teams travelling by land and several helicopters to return to Medan. A clear morning Saturday allowed rescuers to finally reach the victims and build an emergency helipad to land near the site and recover the bodies. But the operation was again halted by late afternoon when bad weather returned. "We've stopped the recovery because the weather is very bad and there is a thick fog," said Medan air base head Suharyonno.
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