Pieces of jetliner wreckage found in sea

MAKASSAR, Indonesia – Part of a jetliner’s tail, food trays and shards of fuselage were pulled from the sea in northeastern Indonesia, officials said Thursday, more than a week after the plane disappeared in a storm with 102 people on board.

No survivors or bodies were recovered, but the news brought some comfort to family members of missing passengers.

Three Americans – a man from Oregon and his two daughters – also were aboard.

With no emergency locator beacon to guide rescuers, nearly 3,000 soldiers, police and civilians scoured thousands of square miles of dense jungle terrain looking for wreckage of the plane, while sonar-equipped ships and planes combed the choppy waters.

After several false sightings – including one that prompted high-ranking Indonesian officials to wrongly claim the wreckage had been found with a dozen survivors – a fisherman on Wednesday pulled a sheared piece of the tail from the waters between Sulawesi and Borneo islands.