No survivors found in Sukhoi crash

Jakarta, May 10 (IANS) Rescuers who Thursday morning spotted on a mountain slope in Indonesia the wreckage of a Sukhoi super-jet 100 that went missing a day earlier with around 50 people on board said there was no sign of any survivor, an official said.

Though some bodies were found, the exact number was not disclosed, Xinhua reported.

The bodies would be taken out Friday and a search launched for the black box, said Gagah Prakoso, spokesman of the Search and Rescue Agency, at the Halim Perdana Kusuma Air Force base.

"The evacuation is planned tomorrow (Friday)," he said.

The plane was seen by rescuers from air on the slope of Mount Salak in west Java, Prakoso said earlier.

The Russian Sukhoi Superjet-100, on a demonstration flight over Indonesia, went missing Wednesday.

Indonesian transport ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan had said the plane took off from Indonesian air base Halim Perdana Kusuma in East Jakarta.

It lost contact at 2.25 p.m. while trying to descend from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet near a small airport in Bogor.

The SSJ-100 carried out two demonstration flights in the Indonesian capital.

It arrived in Jakarta as part of a demonstration tour of six Asian countries. It has been to Myanmar, Pakistan and Kazakhstan and was due to visit Laos and Vietnam.

The Superjet 100 is a medium-haul passenger aircraft developed by Sukhoi in cooperation with US and European aviation corporations, including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace and Honeywell.