Investigators hunted for clues yesterday as to why an Indonesian jetliner crashed seconds after takeoff, sifting through body parts and bits of flesh as they worked, as weeping families looked for loved ones among dozens of charred bodies laying outside a morgue.
At least 149 people were killed when the Boeing 737-200 crashed on Monday in Indonesia's third largest city of Medan, 47 of them on the ground, a hospital official said yesterday after tallying the corpses. But 15 passengers survived, including an 18-month-old boy who was shielded in his mother's arms.
Transport Minister Hatta Rajasa said it would be several weeks before the cause of the crash was known, but that investigators would be looking at why the Mandala Airlines plane failed to take off properly. The flight-data recorder has been found, officials said.
Survivors said the jetliner started shaking violently when it reached an altitude of about 100m, veering sharply to the left and smashing onto a busy road.
But some described a loud bang while the plane was still in flight, followed by a ball of fire.
Soon after dawn yesterday, transportation experts arrived at the scene and began sifting through the charred wreckage, which was sprawled across the ash-covered street and a row of houses.
"We found the leg of a child and lots of burnt flesh," said air force Lieutenant Andri, who goes by a single name.
Rajasa asked families of the victims to come to the morgue to help identify the dead, saying experts were having trouble because the bodies were so badly burnt.
"The families know what to look for," he told el-Shinta radio.
Outside the Adam Malik Hospital morgue, around 90 blackened bodies were laid out on yellow sheets under a tent. Sobbing relatives went from corpse to corpse looking for parents, sons and daughters. Others enlisted the help of people who claimed to have paranormal powers.
"I found my son-in-law because I remembered the trousers he was wearing," said Asiyah, 50. "But I cannot find my daughter. I will stay here until I do."
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono toured the crash site yesterday after attending the funeral of the north Sumatra governor, who died in the crash.
An 18-month-old boy and his 32-year-old mother were among the survivors, said a Mandala spokeswoman.
However, the woman saw her eldest son in flames. He later died.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image