Indonesian troops comb beaches for more plane debris

MAKASSAR, Indonesia, Jan 13 (Reuters) Indonesian troops were combing beaches today 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 US 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 metres 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 from authorities.

Bakri Hapipah found the plane's tail stabilizer snarled in a fishing net 300 metres 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-metre long piece on Tuesday but initially stored it under his stilted house because he thought it was only a slab of plywood, before a neighbour 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.

REUTERS SY DS1230