JAKARTA/PANGKALAN BUN: A Singapore military vessel on Wednesday located the fuselage of the AirAsia passenger jet that crashed more than two weeks ago off the coast of Indonesia, the Singapore defense minister said.

Ng Eng Hen said on his Facebook page that he was informed by his navy chief that the plane’s fuselage had been found and posted pictures of the underwater wreckage.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s navy, Manahan Simorangkir, said they had images of wreckage with a length of 20 meters, a width of 7 meters and a height of 3 meters, but could not confirm it was the fuselage.

Indonesia AirAsia’s Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on Dec. 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

The discovery of the fuselage is the latest boost in a slow-moving search operation often hampered by bad weather. It followed the recovery this week of both the plane’s black boxes, which contain vital information to determine what caused the crash.

“The MV Swift Rescue has located the fuselage of the AirAsia plane in the Java Sea,” said Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen in a Facebook post, adding that Indonesian search and rescue officials had been informed.

“The accident is a tragic event resulting in the loss of many lives. I hope that with the fuselage located, some form of closure can come to the families of the victims to ease their grief.”

His post was accompanied by underwater photos of what appeared to the fuselage. The words “now” and “everyone” are visible, apparently from AirAsia’s motto “Now Everyone Can Fly” painted on the plane’s exterior.

Indonesia’s national search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo confirmed that the fuselage had been found by the Singaporean ship and said divers would head to the wreckage on Thursday.

“It’s dark today, its not possible to dive, so we will dive tomorrow. The main focus is to find victims in the fuselage,” he told AFP.

“If it’s difficult we will lift (the fuselage) up either in part or in whole.”

Finding the main body of the Airbus 320-200 has been seen as vital, as most of the victims are believed to be still trapped inside. Just 48 bodies have so far been recovered.

The Singapore Navy ship was part of a huge international hunt for the plane, which also included US and Chinese ships.