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Warning alarms can be heard “screaming” on the cockpit voice recorder of AirAsia Flight 8501 before it crashed, an investigator was quoted as saying Wednesday.

Among the audible alerts is one that indicated the plane is stalling, the investigator told Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Wall Street Journal. NBC News was immediately unable to confirm the accounts.

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The reports come a day after Indonesia's transport minister said the Airbus A320, which crashed last month with 162 people on board, was climbing at an abnormally high rate before it plunged and disappeared from radar.

“The warning [alarms] kept on screaming, and in the background, they [the pilot and co-pilot] were trying to recover the plane,” the unidentified investigator told the WSJ. “But what they said wasn't clear.” He added that the flight data recorder also indicated that stall warnings were going off.

AFP reported the same claims, citing an investigator from Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, adding that the pilots' voices were drowned out by the sound of the alarms.

Minister Ignasius Jonan told Parliament on Tuesday that radar data showed the doomed jet was climbing at about 6,000 feet a minute before it disappeared on December 28. "It is not normal to climb like that, it's very rare for commercial planes, which normally climb just 1,000 to 2,000 feet per minute," he said. "It can only be done by a fighter jet."

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- Alastair Jamieson