JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian military Hercules C-130 transport plane crashed Sunday in the easternmost province of Papua, killing all 13 people on board.

Air force chief of staff Agus Supriatna told MetroTV the plane was carrying 12 tons of food supplies and cement from Timika to Wamena, a distance of about 200 kilometers (125 miles), when it crashed just minutes before its scheduled landing.

He said bad weather was suspected to be the cause of the crash. The plane was carrying three pilots and 10 other personnel.

TV footage showed rescuers and locals had reached the wreckage of the plane and were bringing out the victims.

The plane took off from Timika at 5:35 a.m. and crashed about four minutes before it was scheduled to land in Wamena, the capital of the mountainous district of Jayawijaya.

It was the third serious air accident in Indonesia in less than a month. On Nov. 24, a Bell 412 EP helicopter from the Indonesian army crashed in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, killing three. A week later, a police plane with 13 people aboard crashed into the sea on the way to the island of Batam, near Singapore.

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of more than 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, from plane and train crashes to ferry sinkings.

The military, which suffers from low funding, has also regularly suffered airplane and helicopter crashes.

In July last year, an air force Hercules crashed into a neighborhood of Medan, Indonesia's third largest city, killing more than 140 people including military personnel, family members traveling with them and people on the ground.</s>JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian military Hercules C-130 transport plane crashed Sunday in bad weather in the easternmost province of Papua, killing all 13 people on board.

The plane was carrying 12 tons of food supplies and cement from Timika to Wamena, a distance of about 200 kilometers (125 miles), when it crashed just minutes before its scheduled landing, said air force chief of staff Agus Supriatna.

The plane was carrying three pilots and 10 other personnel.

Bad weather and low clouds in Wamena, the capital of the mountainous district of Jayawijaya, were believed to be factors in the crash, deputy air force chief of staff Hadiyan Sumintaatmadja told a news conference.

“The tower in Wamena has spotted the plane, but it was not certain that the plane saw the runway,” he said. He did not rule out that the plane hit a mountain.

An investigation is ongoing. He said the aircraft, purchased from Australia where it was first used in the 1980s, had more than 60 hours left until the next routine maintenance.

The plane took off from Timika at 5:35 a.m. and crashed about four minutes before it was scheduled to land in Wamena. TV footage showed rescuers and locals had reached the wreckage of the plane and brought out all the victims.

It was the third serious air accident in Indonesia in less than a month. On Nov. 24, a Bell 412 EP helicopter from the Indonesian army crashed in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, killing three. A week later, a police plane with 13 people aboard crashed into the sea on the way to the island of Batam, near Singapore.

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of more than 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, from plane and train crashes to ferry sinkings.

The military, which suffers from low funding, has also regularly suffered airplane and helicopter crashes.

In July last year, an air force Hercules crashed into a neighborhood of Medan, Indonesia’s third largest city, killing more than 140 people including military personnel, family members traveling with them and people on the ground.</s>The Hercules C130 plane had taken off from the city of Timika before crashing near its destination of Wamena at around 6.15 a.m. local time, said Ivan Ahmad Riski Titus, operational director of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency.

The crash site on Lisuwa mountain had been found and the bodies of the victims were being brought back to Wamena, he said.

Air transport is commonly used in remote and mountainous Papua, Indonesia's easternmost province, where land travel is often impossible.

Indonesia has a patchy air safety record and President Joko Widodo promised a review of the country's aging air force fleet last year after a military transport plane crashed, killing more than 100 people. (Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Editing by Ed Davies and Paul Tait)</s>Thirteen people have died after an Indonesian military transport plane crashed in the east of the country Sunday, officials said, marking yet another air accident for the armed forces.

The Hercules C-130 plane took off from Timika city in Papua province carrying 12 crew and one passenger, but came down in a remote mountainous region shortly before its scheduled landing, officials said.

“The operator on land saw the plane at 06:08 am local time but at 06:09 AM the plane had lost contact,” air force chief Agus Supriatna told AFP.

The plane was expected to land at 06:13 am local time.

Aboard the aircraft were three pilots, eight technicians, a navigator and a military officer, as well as food and cement, Supriatna said.

Weather around the area is known to be unpredictable, and the plane went in and out of clouds before the crash, he added.

Rescuers located the plane debris soon after. All 13 bodies have been recovered according to the air force. Supriatna said a team was heading to the site to investigate.

The fatal incident is the latest for Indonesia’s accident-prone military.

In November an army helicopter accident killed three on Borneo, while another three died when a military chopper went into a home in Central Java in July.

Some 12 people were killed in March when another military helicopter went down in bad weather on Sulawesi in central Indonesia.

But the worst incident in recent times was in June 2015, when an air force Hercules C-130 plane crashed into a residential neighbourhood in the city of Medan, killing 142 people and causing widespread destruction.</s>At least 12 people on board an Indonesian military aircraft were killed Sunday morning when the plane crashed into a mountain in the eastern section of the country, the Indonesian military said in a statement.

The Hercules C-130 took off from Timika at 5:35 a.m. local time and was expected to land in Wamena at 6:13 a.m.

Authorities saw the plane was ready to land at 6:08 a.m. but lost contact with it a minute later. By 8:40 a.m., military personnel had found the aircraft in the Lisuwa mountain area of Papua province.

In June 2015, another C-130 military transport plane crashed. The accident took place in Medan, on the island of Sumatra, minutes after takeoff.

Those killed numbered 135 people, 122 military personnel and family members on board and 13 people on the ground. In December 2014, AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, crashing into the Java Sea after stalling following a sudden ascent. All 162 people on board died.</s>JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police have detained dozens of people ahead of a West Papua independence protest on Monday.

At least 200 people were arrested in several cities in Papua and Java, said Veronica Koman, a lawyer for Papuan independence activist Filep Karma.

Monday is the 55th anniversary of the official declaration of an Indonesian military campaign to take control of Papua from the Dutch.

Koman said several people were arrested last week when they applied for demonstration permits.

She said the headquarters of the pro-independence National Committee for West Papua in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, was vandalized during a police raid on Monday.

The Dutch colonizers of the Indonesian archipelago held onto West Papua when Indonesia became independent after World War II. It became part of Indonesia following a U.N.-supervised referendum in 1969 criticized as undemocratic.
An Indonesian military Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport plane crashes in Papua province killing all 13 people on board.