REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The National Police's Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team has managed to identify 72 out of 100 bodies of AirAsia QZ8501 victims found by the joint SAR team led National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) so far.

The AirAsia Indonesia in a press statement here, Sunday, said 21 bodies were under identification process and seven bodies were expected to arrive in Bhayangkara Hospital in Surabaya, soon.

The search and evacuation efforts continued to be carried out in the Karimata Strait and the Java Sea waters to find more bodies.

On Saturday (Feb 7), three bodies were found in the bottom of the Java Sea. Basarnas confirmed that one of four bodies found on Friday (Feb. 6), was the ill-fated plane's pilot or co-pilot.

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.

The AirAsia plance was en route from Surabaya, East Java Province, to Singapore when it crashed in the Java Sea, on Dec. 28, 2014.

Of the total 162 victims, 155 were Indonesians including the pilot, three South Koreans, a French co-pilot, a British, a Singaporean and a Malaysian national.

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.

Ikuti Whatsapp Channel Republika