$470,000 in Cash Aboard Trigana Plane That Crashed, Officials Say

A passenger plane that crashed with 54 people on board in Indonesia's Papua province was carrying around $470,000 in government cash for poor families in remote villages, a post office spokesman said Monday.

"There were four people carrying the money, 6.5 billion rupiah ($471,500)," PT Pos spokesman Abu Sofjan said, adding that it was part of an official assistance program for the poor and was intended to be distributed to villagers.

There was no suggestion that the large sum of money being transported on the plane was linked to its crash.

Rescue teams were heading to the mountainous site where the Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 plane is believed to have crashed Sunday in the latest in a string of aviation disasters in the sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago.

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