JAYAPURA, Indonesia -- An Indonesian passenger plane that disappeared two days ago was destroyed when it slammed into a mountain, killing all 54 people on board, the country's top rescue official said.
Rescuers only reached the crash site today after being hindered by rugged, forested terrain and bad weather.
"The plane was totally destroyed, and all the bodies were burned and difficult to identify," said National Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo. "There is no chance anyone survived."
He said that so far 53 bodies had been recovered and they would be taken to Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, so they can be identified.
Smoldering wreckage of the Trigana Air Service turboprop plane was spotted from the air Monday morning in a rugged area of the easternmost province of Papua, rescue officials said.
Four postal workers aboard the plane were escorting four bags of cash totaling $468,750 in government fuel aid, said Franciscus Haryono, the head of the post office in Jayapura, the provincial capital.
The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was flying from Jayapura to the city of Oksibil when it lost contact. Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot made a distress call.
The cash from the Social Affairs Ministry was to be distributed among people in remote areas to cushion the jump in fuel costs, Haryono said.
"They were carrying those bags [of cash] to be handed out to poor people in Oksibil through a post office there," Haryono said.
President Joko Widodo's administration raised fuel prices last year and slashed government subsidies, a move the government said will save the country billions of dollars but that has led to protests around the country.
Officials said three search planes spotted the wreckage about 7 miles from Oksibil. Search and rescue operations involving about 10 aircraft were stopped Monday evening because of darkness, said Heronimus Guru, deputy operations director of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
The plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on a scheduled 42-minute flight. Five children, including two infants, were among the passengers.
"Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage when it was spotted by a plane search," Soelistyo said.
Search planes went into the air early Monday after residents of a village not far from Oksibil told police that they saw a plane flying low before crashing into a mountain, said Ludiyanto, who leads the search-and-rescue operation from Jayapura. Like many Indonesians, Ludiyanto uses only one name.
The airline's crisis center official in Jayapura's Sentani airport, Budiono, said all the passengers were Indonesians.
Budiono said the passengers included three local government officials and two members of the local parliament who were to attend a ceremony Monday in Oksibil marking the 70th anniversary of Indonesia's independence from Dutch colonial rule.
Widodo said Monday that he has instructed the Transportation Ministry to improve aviation safety to prevent future crashes.
Oksibil, about 175 miles south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was scheduled to land.
Toulouse, France-based plane-maker ATR said late Sunday that it "acknowledges the reported loss of contact" with the Trigana flight and that it was "standing by to support the relevant aviation authorities."
Trigana Air Service, which began operations in 1991, had 22 aircraft as of December 2013 and flies to 21 destinations in Indonesia. The carrier has had 19 serious accidents since 1992, resulting in the loss of eight aircraft and major damage to 11 others, according to the Aviation Safety Network's online database.
Information for this article was contributed by Nini Karmini, Ali Kotarumalos and Angela Charlton of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/18/2015