Here's a look at Indonesia's worst aviation disasters

The crash of a Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 about four minutes after it took off from Jakarta Saturday is the latest in a series of air accidents to rock Indonesia. The Southeast Asian archipelago relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands but has suffered a string of deadly plane crashes in recent years. Here are the worst aviation disasters in the nation's history:

The worst disaster in Indonesia's aviation history left 234 dead in 1997. An Airbus A-300B4 operated by national carrier Garuda Indonesia crashed in a smog-shrouded ravine in North Sumatra, just short of Medan's airport.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 from budget airline Lion Air crashes off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, killing 189 passengers and crew members. Investigators cite problems with the plane's anti-stall system as one of the contributing factors.

In 2014, an AirAsia plane plunged into the Java Sea during stormy weather, killing 162 people. The plane was flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

A Mandala Airlines domestic flight crashed shortly after take-off in 2005 into a densely populated suburb in Medan, a city of two million on the island of Sumatra, killing at least 150 including passengers, crew and people on the ground.

In June 2015 an Indonesian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff, also coming down in a residential area in Medan, killing around 122 people on board, many of them servicemen and women and their families. Around 20 people were also killed on the ground and several housing blocks were torn apart.