AGENCY
JAKARTA/SINGAPORE: After three days of intense search, at least 40 bloated bodies and debris of the missing AirAsia aircraft carrying 162 people were found on Tuesday in the Java Sea off Indonesia but mystery remained over the cause of the crash.
The Indonesian Navy reported that 40 bodies had been retrieved by one warship and rescuers were continuing to recover more bodies and were “very busy now”.
The bodies were spotted along with debris floating in the Java Sea off the Indonesian part of Borneo, close to the area where contact was lost with the aircraft on Sunday morning.
Relatives of the 162 people on board the ill-fated plane hugged each other and burst into tears in Surabaya from where the plane had taken off for Singapore as they watched television footage of bodies floating in the sea.
Indonesian Transportation Ministry’s Acting Director General of Air Transportation, Djoko Murjatmodjo, said that the wreckage was discovered in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan, and belonged to the AirAsia flight QZ8501.
“It has been confirmed that it is debris from an aircraft bearing red and white colours,” Djoko said, citing that the debris was found by the ministry’s rescue team.
Search and rescue operations are on in the area in coordination with Basarnas (Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency), he said.
Earlier, an Indonesian air force plane spotted a “shadow” on the seabed believed to be that of the Airbus A320-200, Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency Chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.