A passenger plane that crashed Sunday with 54 people on board in Indonesia’s Papua province was carrying cash worth about $470,000 for local aid.
The riders on the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 plane, including 44 adult passengers, five children and infants and five crew, were carrying money for remote villages in Indonesia’s poor easternmost province. The funds were part of an official assistance program and were intended to be distributed to villagers, Reuters reports.
“There were four people carrying the money, 6.5 billion rupiah ($471,500),” a spokesman for Indonesia’s postal service said.
The crash is the latest in a slew of aviation catastrophes in Southeast Asia. Search and rescue teams have spotted debris believed to be from the crashed aircraft in the heavily forested Bintang Mountains district.
[Reuters]
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