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Search teams recover 3 more bodies

A helicopter of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue agency picked up the bodies found earlier in the day by a Malaysian navy ship, Xinhua reported.

According to authorities, one of those bodies was of a woman, the remaining two are yet to be identified. The bodies were rushed to the Imanuddin hospital in the central Kalimantan province of Indonesia’s Borneo island before being transported to Surabaya, where the ill-fated aircraft had taken off for Singapore. The AirAsia flight with 155 passengers and seven crew members went missing soon after taking off.

The Airbus A320-200 was cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet when it lost contact with air traffic control amid a thunderstorm in the area over Java Sea.

The jetliner is believed to have crashed near the Karimata Strait, 153 km from Kalimantan province. Four large objects believed to be of the plane were found Saturday, the biggest one being 18 mtrs long. Another large object - 9.8 mtrs long, 1.1 metres wide and 0.4 mt high - was found by Indonesian teams Sunday.

Airlines obliged to pay enough compensation to kin: Indonesia
Indonesia monday said AirAsia was “obliged” to pay compensation to the next of kin of the 162 victims on board the crashed plane belonging to the budget airline. “An airline must pay compensation,” Acting Air Transportation Director-General Djoko Murdjatmodjo said. “The obligation to pay compensation lies with the airline,” he said in response to a question on insurance payment by AirAsia. Payment dispute has arisen after it emerged that the plane was flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed.

AirAsia victims’ families offer visit to search location
Reaching out to grieving relatives of the AirAsia crash, Indonesia Monday said family members of the passengers have been offered a visit on board a naval ship to the search area in Java Sea.

Multinational efforts to scour the choppy waters have entered its second week after AirAsia Flight QZ8501 en route from Indonesia’s Surabaya city to Singapore carrying 162 people on board mysteriously crashed on December 28.

Searchers have found 37 bodies so far and efforts have focussed on locating the fuselage of the aircraft believed to contain remaining victims besides the black box, required to determine the cause of the crash.

The gesture is to “to lessen their sorrow and sense of loss”, Indonesia’s armed forces chief General Moeldoko said.

The relatives will be ferried from Surabaya - where the AirAsia crisis centre for relatives is located - to Pangkalan Bun via military flight, the Straits Times reported. Indonesia’s police chief Sutarman said he promised relatives that all bodies recovered will be identified.

Strong current hinders search for AirAsia

Search and recovery teams took advantage of calmer seas Monday to expand the hunt for wreckage and victims of a passenger jet that crashed into the Java Sea on December 28.

However, officials said the underwater current at the site of what is believed to be the main wreckage is still too strong for divers there. The current is also the reason the search has widened, as debris might have spread over some distance.

Bambang Soelistyo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said, “The diving team, including the Russian divers, still cannot dive. Only two divers managed to dive, but since the underwater current is so strong, they are all now on standby.” 37 bodies recovered The search is now in its ninth day.  With the recovery of three more bodies Monday, 37 have been found, but only 13 have been identified. Bad weather has hampered.


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