REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SURABAYA -- Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) teams from numerous countries have joined the DVI team of the Indonesian Police to assist with identifying the Air Asia flight QZ8501's crash victims at Bhayangkara Police Hospital here, an official said.
"The DVI team from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offered its assistance this morning with the identification process," Indonesian DVI International Director Senior Commissioner Anton Kastilani told newsmen here on Tuesday (6/1).
According to him, a UAE representative has reached the DVI command post at East Java Police Headquarters with a medical team of five members to help with the identification process.
"It is a humanitarian task and therefore we have accepted the assistance from the UAE team to complete the identification process as soon as possible," Kastilani said, adding that the team has specialized in forensics, DNA, and fingerprints.
He pointed out that the DVI team of the Indonesian Police has also been assisted by DVI teams from Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia.
Kastilani noted that the identification process has been conducted by 229 medical personnel and numerous experts from different fields of sciences.
In the meantime, East Java DVI spokesman Senior Commissioner Awi Setiyono revealed that five UAE nationals and a South Korean joined the team on Tuesday.
"We are also a member of the International DVI, which is a trans-border organization. We communicate through Interpol network, so that every DVI institution in every country can be informed about an incident in other parts of the world. Following the Air Asia incident, some of them have offered empathy and have come forward to assist" he noted.
Setiyono explained that the UAE and South Korean teams will join the Australian and Singaporean teams, which had earlier worked with the national DVI.
Until now, a total of 37 bodies have been evacuated from the Air Asia flight QZ8501's crash site in the Karimata Strait to Bhayangkara Hospital in Surabaya where the East Java Police's disaster victim identification team has identified 13 bodies.
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