Lion Air: Indonesian rescue diver dies while searching for victims of jet crash near Jakarta

Updated

An Indonesian rescue diver has died in the search for a passenger jet that crashed early this week near Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board, search and rescue agency Basarnas said on Saturday. News of the death of Syachrul Anto, 48, came on Saturday as authorities revealed divers had reported seeing the fuselage and engines of the crashed Lion Air jet on the sea floor and a ping locator had detected a signal possibly from the cockpit voice recorder. Basarnas chief Muhammad Syaugi said: ‘Deepest condolences for the passing of a humanitarian hero from the Indonesian Diving Rescue Team.’

Mr Anto’s family had chosen not to conduct an autopsy and asked for his remains to be buried immediately. Key points: Anto died around 4pm on Friday afternoon, but it was not immediately clear how he perished

His family chose not to conduct an autopsy and asked for his remains to be buried immediately

Anto had been involved in other missions including the search for an AirAsia jet that crashed off Borneo in 2014

News of the diver's death came as Indonesia's search and rescue chief said divers had reported seeing the fuselage and engines of the crashed Lion Air jet on the seafloor. Rescue divers have played critical roles in recovering human remains for identification and finding out what happened to the near-new Boeing Co. 737 MAX that crashed early on Monday into the Java Sea, 13 minutes after it took off from Jakarta. “They’re scattered everywhere and some may have been washed away by the current.”

Dozens of body bags containing remains have been recovered from the crash site. On Thursday, November 1, officials recovered the flight data recorder but are still searching for the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, which could answer the question as to why the brand new Boeing-737 MAX 8 crashed. The pilot of flight JT610 had asked for, and received, permission to turn back to Jakarta, but what went wrong remains a mystery. “The team have been hearing the ‘ping’ sound from another black box for two days,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the transportation safety committee (KNKT), told Reuters on Friday. The accident has also resurrected concerns about Indonesia’s poor air safety record which until recently saw its carriers facing years-long bans from entering European Union and US airspace.
An Indonesian Diving Rescue Team member dies while searching the debris from the passenger jet that crashed earlier this week near Jakarta.