AirAsia crash: 10 more bodies brought to hospital

Jakarta, Jan 3: Ten more bodies retrieved from the site where an AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea reached a hospital in Indonesia Saturday for identification.

The total number of bodies sent to the Police Hospital Bhayangkara in Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java, has risen to 18, with four of them successfully identified and handed to their families and relatives, a provincial police spokesman said.

"Ten more bodies have arrived here, including five women, four man and one child," he said at the hospital.

So far, at least 30 bodies have been pulled out from Indonesian waters where the ill-fated Singapore-bound AirAsia QZ8501 flight carrying 162 passengers and crew on board crashed Sunday, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, two Indonesian navy helicopters have brought the remaining eight bodies of the total 30 corpses to a state-run hospital nearby for preliminary identification process.

They will also be brought to Surabaya later on for further identification.

S.B. Supriyadi, operation and training director of Indonesian Forces and National Search and Rescue Agency, said that a US navy vessel was on its way to the crash site, bringing logistics needed for carrying the bodies.

Supriyadi added that Russia has sent two planes, including an amphibian one, to take part in the search operation.

He said that Russian team has also brought undersea scanning equipment to locate the plane's black box devices.

"All searching efforts are now focused to find the plane's blackbox and wreckage," Supriyadi said.