Indonesia plane search scours area of first discovery

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 12 (Reuters) Efforts to recover bodies and wreckage from an Indonesian plane that is believed to have crashed into the sea have now switched to areas near where a tail stabiliser was found, the head of the search said today.

Pieces of the Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that vanished from radar screens on January 1 with 102 people aboard were found in the last few days at roughly the same location, floating in the sea or washed up on beaches.

The biggest part found so far appeared to be the stabiliser, found snarled in a fisherman's net off Lojie Beach on the west coast of Sulawesi island on Tuesday, but not immediately reported to authorities and only announced yesterday.

A life vest, seat tables and interior material have also been recovered by residents, military and police in the sea and on the shore around the seaside town of Pare Pare, 8 km north of Lojie Beach.

Those finds prompted searchers to concentrate on combing the shoreline.

''Search teams in the mountains have been pulled back and we have built new posts in Pare Pare. Marines are helping police and army scour beaches there,'' said First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, who is coordinating the search.

''Aerial resources are focused on areas of Pare Pare and Majene to find anything floating,'' Suyanto told reporters. He commands the air base in Makassar, Sulawesi's largest city, from where the search is being directed.

Makassar is about 1,400 km northeast of Jakarta. Pare Pare is a two-hour drive north from Makassar while Majene is further northwest. All are on Sulawesi's west coast.

Suyanto suggested the plane had crashed into the sea off Majene, adding he believed it had disintegrated into small pieces. He declined to say whether this could have happened before or after it hit the water.

Despite the possibility that the Boeing had broken up, Indonesian navy vessels assisted by a US oceanographic ship were still trying to locate its fuselage.

On the identity of a woman whose body was recovered in the vicinity shortly after discovery of the first wreckage, Suyanto declined to state any conclusion.

But he said that, considering that the biggest part of the plane found so far was just 1 metre long, a human body was unlikely to have survived the disaster in one piece.

The woman's body was found intact and fully clothed, with few visible signs of damage except bloating.

State broadcaster Radio Republik Indonesia said Vice President Jusuf Kalla, a Makassar native, had promised a cash prize for the fisherman who found the tail stabiliser.

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.

Pare Pare is about 150 km south of Mamuju, another area on Sulawesi's west coast, which became the main focus of the search on Monday when Indonesian ships detected large metal objects on the sea bed.

REUTERS