Body Count of AirAsia Victims Reaches 91

Jakarta (Antara) - The National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas)-led joint team has, so far, recovered 91 bodies of the total 162 victims of the AirAsia QZ8501 flight crash. Of the 91 bodies, 64 had been identified by the National Police\'s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team, the AirAsia management noted in a press statement, here, Wednesday. According to data received until February 3, thirteen bodies were being identified by the DVI team, and 14 bodies were expected to arrive at the Bhayangkara police hospital in Surabaya, East Java. The search efforts are still ongoing in the Java Sea and Karimata Strait area where the aircraft crashed on December 28, 2014. On Tuesday (Feb. 3), the divers from the search and rescue (SAR) team successfully recovered six bodies from the bottom of the Java Sea. Another SAR team is operating in Makassar Strait to find more bodies and debris around Mamuju waters in West Sulawesi, with their search area extending up to Pinrang and Selayar Island waters in South Sulawesi, where the local traditional fishermen had recently found bodies of the AirAsia victims. Of the 162 victims, 155 were Indonesians, three South Koreans, a French, a British, a Singaporean and a Malaysian national. The plane was en route from Surabaya to Singapore when it crashed in the Java Sea, on Dec. 28, 2014. In the meantime, the transportation ministry\'s National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) recently released 18 points of factual information in a preliminary report based on the black box recordings of the ill-fated AirAsia flight QZ8501. Head of the KNKT\'s AirAsia QZ8501 Investigation Team Mardjono Siswosuwarno stated, among other things, that the second-in-command pilot, or co-pilot, was flying the aircraft when the accident occurred. He was on the right side while the pilot, or captain, was seated on the left side as the monitoring pilot. (*)