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MAKASSAR, Indonesia - Part of the tail of an Indonesian plane which disappeared with 102 people on board 10 days ago has been found in the sea off Sulawesi island, an air base commander said today.
Police later said a body was found floating in the same general area where the piece was located.
The ill-fated Adam Air Boeing 737-400 was heading from Java to Manado in the northern part of Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather on Jan. 1.
"This morning I announced that there has been a finding of a part of Adam Air. What was found was the right tail's stabiliser number 65C25746-76. This thing was found by a fisherman in Pare Pare," Eddy Suyanto, the air base commander in Makassar, told reporters.
"This object has the same number as the Boeing catalogue," he said, as he showed the white and slightly scratched stabiliser that was found yesterday to reporters.
Pare Pare is a seaside town about 100km north of Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi province, from where the search operations are being co-ordinated.
It is about 150km south of Mamuju in west Sulawesi which has been the main focus of the hunt since Monday when Indonesian ships detected large metal objects deep on the sea bed.
Today, police found a body floating in the area.
"We found a female dead body in the south edge of Nusantara Port Pare Pare," police official Simon Benteng told Reuters by telephone from Pare Pare.
A US navy oceanographic ship, the USNS Mary Sears, has been drafted to aid in the search but has not yet shed light on whether the objects are wreckage.
"Up until now I have not received any reports from Mary Sears," Suyanto said.
Moekhlas Sidik, commander of the navy's eastern fleet, said yesterday the Mary Sears had confirmed the findings of metal objects at three points and was focusing on one of the sites.
The objects were at a water depth of 1,700 metres and while the US vessel could map the sea bed, the US Naval Oceanographic Office said it had its limits.
"In shallow water that's not too difficult to do, in less than 500 metres. Any deeper ... and it will be very difficult for our ship to identify any parts, especially if they're small," he told Reuters in Washington.
- REUTERS
