Police rescue team search for the wreckage of the missing
Indonesian plane along the beach outside the town of Kabupaten
Barru, South Sulawesi January 12, 2007. Police and the military
have narrowed their search to focus on a beach area and surrounding
waters where plane wreckage from the missing airliner has been
found, the head of the search said on Friday.
Indonesian troops were combing beaches on Saturday for more
debris from a missing Indonesian airliner, an official leading the
search said, hoping for more clues to piece together what happened
to the jet.
Mostly small parts of the Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that vanished
from radar screens on New Year's Day with 102 people aboard were
found in the past few days at roughly the same location, floating
in the sea or washed up on beaches.
Officials have suggested the plane may have crashed into the sea
off the west coast of Sulawesi island, disintegrating into small
pieces.
Despite the possibility that the Boeing had broken up,
Indonesian navy ships assisted by a U.S. oceanographic ship have
been trying to locate its fuselage, which could still house the
flight recorder that could provide clues to explain the
disaster.
"We want to find the plane's main body and the black box. We
know that the Makassar Strait can go as deep as 1,700 meters (5,600
ft) and we need more sophisticated equipment to locate the plane's
body," said search mission chief First Air Marshal Eddy
Suyanto.
Suyanto told reporters police and military troops would keep
scouring the shore for other items belonging to the doomed
plane.
The fisherman who discovered the first piece of the missing
Indonesian plane was given on Saturday a cash prize of 50 million
rupiah (2,600 pounds) from authorities.
Bakri Hapipah found the plane's tail stabilizer snarled in a
fishing net 300 meters (980 ft) from the shore.
"I want to get a bigger fishing boat. A motorized one. I still
want to be a fisherman," the 45 year-old told reporters when asked
what he wanted to do with the cash.
"I hope (the passengers) can be found soon," Bakri added.
He found the one-meter long piece on Tuesday but initially
stored it under his stilted house because he thought it was only a
slab of plywood, before a neighbor persuaded him to report it to
the police a day later.
Since then, a life vest, food trays, wing shreds, seat cushions
and interior material have also been recovered by residents,
military and police in the sea and on the shores around the seaside
town of Pare Pare.
But none of them had been as big or as significant as the tail
stabilizer which had a distinctive serial number.
The 17-year-old plane was heading from Surabaya in East Java to
Manado in northern Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather on New
Year's Day. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot had
reported concerns over crosswinds.
(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2007)
