Body parts found at Indonesian plane crash site

Indonesian divers recover tire, more debris of crashed plane

JAKARTA -- Divers on Sunday found a tire and more debris of Indonesia's Sriwijaya Air passenger plane that crashed into the Java Sea off Jakarta, a rescuer and an official said.

A local TV footage showed rescuers lifting a tire of the Boeing 737-500 plane from the sea, and underwater equipment displaying a lot of debris of the ill-fated plane at the sea floor with the depth of 23 meters.

Spokesman of the National Search and Rescue Office (Basarnas) Yusuf Latief told Xinhua that some pieces of the debris have been collected from the scene.

A total of 362 rescuers with 38 ships, some of them equipped with multi-beam echo-sounders and remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to detect objects underwater, were searching for the victims and the wreckage of the budget airline plane with flight number SJ-182, he said.

"The ships will search for the location of the fuselage of the plane," Latief said.

The search was also carried out by air and land as the strong current might bring the debris to the coast of nearby islands, according to him.

Head of the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency Bagus Puruhito said the focus of the operation was to recover the victims and search for the source of two signals of emergency locator transmitter (ELT) caught by the rescuers.

He said the floor of the sea contained mud, expecting that the two black boxes of the aircraft would be there.

"Now we are attempting to reach the source which is expected to be the black boxes," Puruhito said.

The Boeing 737-500 aircraft, flying from the capital Jakarta to Pontianak city in West Kalimantan province on Saturday afternoon, crashed into the Java Sea off the Seribu District in north of Jakarta.

It was carrying 50 passengers, including seven children and three babies, and 12 crew members.