By Sunday evening, 34 bodies of AirAsia crash victims have been evacuated and all of them have been flown to Surabaya, East Java.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Head of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) Vice Marshal F Henry Bambang Soelistyo believed many bodies of AirAsia crash victims are trapped in the planes fuselage as the number of bodies recovered continues to fall.

"From day to day the number of bodies recovered continues to fall. I predict if what I suppose to be the location of the planes fuselage turns out to be true I still can expect that the bodies of our brothers are still in the planes fuselage in the seabed. If that is the case I will make an all-out effort to find it," he said in a press conference here on Sunday.

The debris and remains of passengers from the ill-fated AirAsia flight QZ8501 were mostly found in the priority search area near Kumai Bay, he said adding that the search for the planes fuselage will be concentrated in the area.

After all, the agency will expand the search area to the east around Karimata Strait in Central Kalimantan based on the Search and Rescue Mapping application, he said.

By Sunday evening, 34 bodies of AirAsia crash victims have been evacuated and all of them have been flown to Surabaya, East Java.

The AirAsia flight QZ8501 with 162 people on board disappeared on Dec. 28 en route from Surabaya to Singapore.

The plane is believed to have crashed in the Java Sea, near Karimata Strait, some 95 Nautical miles (Nm) from Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan.

The search is being coordinated by Basarnas by involving a number of concerned Indonesian institutions such as the military, police and the transportation ministry, as well as foreign countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, the US, Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Russia.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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