1st body identified from AirAsia crash

Jakarta/Singapore, Jan 1: The first victim of the AirAsia plane crash was today identified as a female flight attendant as authorities conducted forensic examination of two of the eight bodies recovered from the Java Sea.

Hayati Lutfiah Hamid's body was returned to her family after her identity was confirmed by fingerprints and personal belongings, Colonel Budiyono of East Java's Disaster Victim Identification Unit said.

Her dead body was retrieved from the Karimata Strait as Hayati Lutfiah Hamid. Budiyono said the fingerprints, as well as scars from surgery, matched the ante-mortem data and information, Jakarta Post reported.

"An ID card with the name Hayati Lutfiah was also found in the clothes of the body labeled B001 when the search and rescue team found it. She was also wearing a necklace with her initial on it and a bracelet that family members confirmed belonged to Hayati," he told journalists in Surabaya, East Java, at a press conference.

The team, however, is yet to identify the second body, labeled B002, as there is currently insufficient data to identify it. He said B002 was a young Mongoloid man of 145-150 centimeters height, with black hair no longer than six cm, with a mole on his left shoulder.

"We have also received four more bodies, two men and two women; we are currently examining them," he said.

Nearly three days after the Singapore-bound plane went off the radar, its debris was found on Tuesday in the Karimata Strait near Pangkalanbun, Central Kalimantan.

The plane was carrying 155 passengers -- one British, one Malaysian, one Singaporean, three South Koreans, 149 Indonesians -- and seven crew members -- six Indonesians and a French co-pilot. Seventeen of the passengers were children.

PTI