Jakarta, Jan 10 (EFE).- Indonesian rescue teams have located the wreckage of the Sriwijaya airline commercial airliner that crashed into the sea on Saturday with 62 people on board a few minutes after taking off from Jakarta.

A signal from the aircraft's blackbox was detected and the first human remains from the wreckage were retrieved on Sunday.

"Thank God and the prayers of the Indonesian people we have found the point where the SJ 182 fell and right now the soldiers of the Armed Forces, especially the Navy, are helping Basarnas (the Indonesian search and rescue agency) to recover the wreckage," Bagus Puruhito, head of Basarnas, said at a press conference in Jakarta.

Throughout the day, rescue teams from several agencies delivered a total of five bags of human remains to authorities and three bags of debris from the plane, officials said.

The location of the crash site, which has not yet been made public but is presumably a few kilometers off the coast of Jakarta, was found after the blackbox signal was detected on Sunday morning, according to Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the National Committee for Transport and Security (KNKT).

The plane, a Boeing 737-524 registered in 1994, crashed into the Java Sea after taking off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in the Indonesian capital, bound for Pontianak, the capital of Western Borneo, as confirmed by Basarnas.

Authorities announced Saturday afternoon that contact with the aircraft had been lost at 2:40 pm, about 13 minutes after takeoff and without any warning from the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT).

At that time, the plane had changed direction abruptly, prompting the control tower to ask the pilots what was happening when it suddenly disappeared from the radar, Indonesian Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi explained at a press conference on Saturday night.

At the moment, the causes of the accident, which killed all 50 passengers, including three babies and other seven minors, and twelve crew members, all of whom were Indonesian, are unknown.

Police have set up a body identification post at a hospital in eastern Jakarta where the families and loved ones of the victims will be treated and receive grief counseling, according to the local website Detik.

In a statement on Sunday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo expressed his condolences for the tragedy and said he was closely following the search and rescue operations.

"My prayers and sympathy are with the families and relatives of the passengers and crew. I hope they receive patience and strength," the president wrote on his Twitter account.

Widodo also the National Committee for Transportation and Safety (KNKT) would conduct an investigation into the accident.

The Sriwijaya plane crash is the latest in a long history of air crashes on the vast Indonesian archipelago and has affected the country's third largest airline and, once again, a model by US manufacturer Boeing.

On October 29, 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 from the low-cost airline Lion Air crashed in the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta after pilots had difficulty with the plane's controls, an accident similar to the one that occurred a few months later with the same model operated by Ethiopian Airlines.

The worst accident in the history of Indonesian aviation occurred in September 1997, when an Airbus of the flag carrier Garuda crashed in the north of the island of Sumatra, resulting in the deaths of the 234 people on board. EFE

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