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JAKARTA - FIFTEEN bodies were pulled from the wreckage of an Indonesian military plane that crashed into a jungle-clad mountain, a military official said on Saturday. The fate of three others on board remained unknown.
Air force spokesman Chaeruddin Ray said none of the victims had been identified.
Among the passengers were a Singaporean, an Indian and a Briton working for the Singapore-based company Credent Technology.
They were testing new camera equipment on the Casa-212 plane when it went down on Thursday during an aerial surveillance mission.
The wreckage was spotted Friday on the rugged, steep slopes of Salak Mountain, 60 miles (100 kilometres) from the capital, Jakarta, but search and rescue teams were not able to reach the site until early on Saturday.
'Rescuers have found 15 bodies,' Mr Ray said. 'The fate of the other three is still not known.'
Medical teams with more than a dozen ambulances were on standby in a nearby hamlet for evacuations, he said.
Indonesia has seen a spate of airline accidents in recent years.
It was the second incident involving a Casa-212 plane in 2008, after a flight operated by the private Dirgantara Air Service crashed in January with three people on board.
The three foreigners were among six civilians on board the military plane when it took off from a Jakarta air base on a short flight to test ground imaging equipment, but it never returned.
The other 12 on the plane were from the military.
The wreckage was reached for the first time early on Saturday morning after two days of uncertainty over its fate.
Police have said local residents were the first to see the plane slam into the dense pocket of jungle on the mountain's slopes. Villagers also reportedly reached the wreckage before it was spotted by an airforce plane Friday.
'People living around the Mount Salak area saw a plane flying on Thursday and then they heard sounds of an explosion,' one police officer in the region said earlier.
The foreigners reportedly worked for Credent Technology offering services in high-resolution satellite imagery and laser scanning for mapping.
Officials plan to return all bodies from the crash to Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma airbase, where the plane originally departed from.
The foreign office in London and the Singaporean foreign ministry confirmed that British and Singaporean nationals were on board. An Indian diplomat in Jakarta confirmed an Indian was also on the flight.
Indonesia has one of the world's worst aviation safety records following a string of deadly disasters in recent years. The archipelago relies heavily on air as well as sea links. -- AFP
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