(USA TODAY) -- A crash site was found Sunday after an Indonesian airliner with 54 people aboard lost contact with air traffic control over a remote, mountainous area in bad weather, multiple media outlets are reporting.
An Indonesian Transportation Ministry official confirmed the plane had been found in the Oktabe district of the Papua region, the BBC and other news outlets reported. The wreckage was found by villagers who said it had crashed into a mountain, BBC said.
The fate of the 49 passengers — including five children — and crew of five was not immediately known.
Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency tweeted that its team had not yet reached the site and could not confirm the reports.
Earlier, the ministry said the Trigana Air Service flight lost contact in the afternoon while flying from the provincial capital of Jayapura to the city of Oksibil on Papua, the country's largest and most eastern province.
The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane lost contact 33 minutes after taking off on the 42-minute flight, the ministry said in a statement. There was no indication that a distress call was made.
The agency tweeted at about 7 a.m. ET that the search has been suspended due to limited visibility as night fell and will resume early Monday. The news agency AFP later tweeted that villagers said they had found the crashed plane.
Because it was night & visibility is limited we suspend search Trigana Air and we continue the search tomorrow morning at 06.00 LT
— Badan SAR Nasional (@SAR_NASIONAL) August 16, 2015
The European Union had barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns. In June this year, the EU regulator maintained the ban, with the exception of four airlines. Trigana Air Service is still banned from flying to the continent.
The 17,000-island nation of 250 million people is the world's fourth largest country by population. It has seen rapid growth in the aviation industry, but is struggling to provide enough pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety.
In December, an AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, killing all 162 people aboard. In June, more than 100 people died when a military plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Medan, Indonesia's third-largest city.
