AirAsia crash: Search enters 8th day

Jakarta/Singapore, Jan 4: The search for victims and black box recorders of ill-fated AirAsia jet on Sunday resumed, a day after the rescue teams found four large objects in the choppy waters of the Java Sea on the seventh day.

With the weather improving, the multi-national searchers are hopeful of retrieving the rest of the bodies and debris of the Airbus 320 which went down into the Java Sea last Sunday with 162 passengers and crew on board.

Commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces General Moeldoko confirmed that 30 bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea so far. "We've recovered 30 bodies and identified 4 from #Airasia850. Slow process, hope we can speed the process ahead," he tweeted.

Four large metal objects belonging to the doomed AirAsia jet were found yesterday.

"We've found four big parts from the plane we're looking for," Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia's search and rescue agency Basarnas, told reporters in Jakarta yesterday.

Two objects were found at the bottom of the sea near Pangkalan Bun. One of the them was measured at 9.4 metres by 4.8 metres and a half-metre high.

The other, found nearby, was 7.2 metres by a half metre. Investigators are focusing on autopsies of recovered bodies to ascertain what happened to the plane.

Though some of the victims' families did not approve of autopsies, media reports said.

PTI