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Jakarta (AP) - Four days after its disappearance off the coast of Bali, the Indonesian naval submarine was found.

This was announced by the army chief of the Southeast Asian country, Air Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto, on Sunday.

"With this authentic evidence, we can confirm that the KRI Nanggala 402 sank and all 53 seafarers on board died while on duty," Tjahjanto said at a press conference.

According to the Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Yudo Margono, the wreck was found by a diving robot at a depth of more than 800 meters.

The submarine lost contact with the fleet during a torpedo exercise

The almost 60-meter-long German-made hunting submarine lost contact with the fleet during a torpedo exercise early Wednesday morning.

It had set sail in Surabaya, Java, and was around 95 kilometers north of Bali at the time.

On Thursday, the Navy announced that the crew would only have enough oxygen until early Saturday morning.

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On Saturday the hopes of finding the sailors alive vanished.

The Navy reported the find of items from the ship, including a bottle of lubricant for the periscope and a torpedo hull.

Since then, the naval command assumed that the submarine had crashed.

Joko Widodo: "A big shock for all of us"

Even before the discovery of the wreck, Indonesian President Joko Widodo sent letters of condolence to the relatives of the 53 people on board, as he announced in a video on Sunday.

“This incident is a great shock to all of us.

We have expressed our deepest regrets for the tragedy, especially the families of the submariners, ”said the President.

There was no information on the cause of the accident on Sunday.

Admiral Margono said there was no human error.

According to his information, an Indonesian survey ship had located the submarine at a depth of around 800 meters.

Yudo Margano: KRI Nanggala broken into three parts

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A rescue ship from Singapore, which only arrived on Sunday morning (local time), then found the wreck with the help of a diving robot (ROV). "The ROV had visual contact (...) at a depth of 838 (meters) where it found pieces of the KRI Nanggala that had broken into three pieces," said Margono. According to the manufacturer, the submarine was only designed for a diving depth of 250 to 500 meters.

A total of 21 ships and 5 aircraft took part in the search, including an Australian warship, an American special aircraft and the salvage ship of the Singapore Navy.

The diesel-electric powered, 1395-ton hunting submarine was built by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel at the end of the 1970s.

A major overhaul was completed in South Korea in 2012.

It was one of five submarines in the Indonesian Navy.

© dpa-infocom