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Military plane crashes in Indonesia's 3rd largest city (Image source:
cbsnews.com)
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More than 100 people were feared dead after a military
transport plane ploughed into a residential area shortly after take-off in
northern Indonesia on Tuesday, in what may be the deadliest accident yet for an
air force with a long history of crashes.
"For the moment we
know there were 113 people (on board). It looks like there are no
survivors," Air Marshal Agus Supriatna told Metro TV in the Sumatra city
of Medan, adding that some of the passengers were air force families.
The crash of the C-130B
Hercules aircraft, which went into service half a century ago, is bound to put
a fresh spotlight on Indonesia's woeful air safety record and its ageing
planes.
Officials said the plane
plunged into a built-up area of the Sumatra city of Medan. Eye witnesses said
it had appeared to explode shortly before it smashed into houses and a hotel.
Reuters report continues:
An official at a nearby
hospital who declined to be named said that 55 bodies had been brought in so
far. In the first hours after the crash officials had said that only a crew of
12 service personnel were on board.
Black smoke billowed from
the wreckage, and crowds of people milling around the area initially hampered
emergency services rushing to the scene.
"We have been using
heavy equipment like earth movers to clear the wreckage of the plane,"
said Romali, chief of Medan's search and rescue agency, who has only one name.
"We are still
evacuating bodies from the rubble and we hope we can finish the operation
tonight," he told Reuters.
The Hercules plane had
been on its way from an air force base in Medan to Tanjung Pinang in Riau
Islands off Sumatra. Media said the pilot had asked to return to the base
because of technical problems.
"It passed overhead
a few times, really low," said Elfrida Efi, a receptionist at the nearby
Golden Eleven Hotel.
"There was fire and
black smoke. The third time it came by it crashed into the roof of the hotel
and exploded straight away," she told Reuters by telephone.
Pressure To Modernize
According to the Aviation
Safety Network, there have been 10 fatal crashes involving Indonesian military
or police aircraft over the last decade. The accidents put under a spotlight
the safety record of Indonesia's aviation and its ageing aircraft.
AirAsia flight QZ8501
crashed less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya in Indonesia to
Singapore last December. All 162 people on board the Airbus A320 were killed.
"It's too early to
say what caused today's disaster, but it will again raise concerns about air
safety in Indonesia, especially since it comes just half a year after the crash
of QZ8501," said Greg Waldron, Asia Managing Editor at Flightglobal, an
aviation industry data and news service.
The Indonesian air force
has now lost four C-130s, reducing its transport reach in an archipelago that
stretches more than 5,000 km from its western to eastern tips.
Air force spokesman Dwi
Badarmanto said it was unclear what caused the crash and, until it was, eight
other C-130Bs would be grounded.
Although Indonesia
accounted for nearly one-fifth of defence spending by Southeast Asian countries
last year, as a percentage of GDP it was the lowest in the region at 0.8
percent, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data.
President Joko Widodo,
who took office last year, has said he plans to double military spending to US$15
billion by 2020.
However, the transport
plane accident could bring pressure on the president to spend more on modernizing the air force.
"This incident shows
us that we must renew our aircraft and our military equipment," Pramono
Anung, a lawmaker and member of the parliamentary commission overseeing
defence, told Reuters.
"The Hercules is
already old, many of our other (weapons) systems are already old. As parliament
we will support giving more funding to the military so that they can
upgrade."
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