Crashed military plane likely carried more passengers

The military cargo plane which crashed Wednesday in Magetan, East Java, might have been carrying more passengers than recorded on the manifest, a military officer said Thursday.Major Sutrisno, an information officer at Iswahyudi Air Force base in East Java, located only four kilometers away from the crash site, said the assumption was made because there were some victims still trapped under the plane.“There’s a possibility that some passengers were not recorded on the flight manifest. We have been using the one issued by the Halim Perdanakusuma Airport,” he said, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.Halim Perdanakusuma Airport records show that the plane was carrying 112 passengers, including 14 crew. With 98 dead, including two local residents, and 15 survivors, supposedly there was only one individual left to be found.However, the evacuation team estimated that another three to five passengers were still trapped in the wreckage.Sutrisno suggested that children might not have been registered by their parents to go on the flight. “However, we don’t know yet whether the trapped passengers are children,” he said.The C-130 Hercules military transport plane, built in 1980, was on a routine flight from the capital, Jakarta, and went down before it could reach Iswahyudi Air Force base in East Java. (adh)

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