Lion air flight located- official

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 October 1998, 16:12 GMT]
A senior official at the Mannar district secretariat (Kachcheri) confirmed this evening that the Lion air flight that went missing since Tuesday has been found in the sea three kilometers west of the Iranaithivu island, off the northern coast of Mannar and 25 kilometers south of Jaffna.

Villagers in the area had found three bodies washed ashore and had burnt all of them as they had been highly decomposed.

One body, according to them, belonged to a white person, another was that of an old woman and third was half eaten by fish.

The plane is lying under water they said.

According to those who went to Nachchikudah yesterday to check out reports about the ill fated plane, the Liberation Tigers in the area have said that divers could come and salvage the plane.

But LTTE had ruled the Navy coming into the area for taking the plane out of the sea.

Meanwhile, the Director General of Aviation instructed the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) this afternoon to stop civilian flights to Jaffna until further notice.

The SLAF informed Lion air and Monara, the private airlines that fly to Jaffna, to discontinue their service.

The Monara airlines said that it was ready resume flights to Jaffna from Monday.