Indonesian plane: Rescuers head to suspected Papua crash site

A Trigana Air Service plane carrying 54 people went missing Sunday in Indonesia's mountainous province of Papua, and rescuers were heading to an area where villagers reported seeing a plane crash into a mountain, officials said. There has been no information of any survivors from the crash, which happened in bad weather on Sunday. Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call. The plane operated by Indonesian carrier Trigana Air lost contact with air traffic control just before 3pm (0600 GMT) Sunday after taking off from Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, the search and rescue agency said. The ATR 42-300 twin-turboprop plane was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew on the flight which was scheduled to take about 45 minutes, it said. But the plane disappeared about 10 minutes before reaching its destination Oksibil, a remote settlement in the mountains south of Jayapura, shortly after it asked permission to start descending to land.