Jakarta, January 28 – Almost a month after AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed into the sea, the Indonesian military said that it was stopping efforts to recover the remains of the commercial jet.
A civilian source close to the search and rescue operations told CNN that Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, Basarnas, will continue its work to try to retrieve bodies from the wreckage site in the Java Sea, IANS reported.
The military provided the majority of personnel and hardware involved in the recovery operation, which was hindered by bad weather and technical problems. Flight QZ8501 went down December 28, 2014 as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya toward Singapore with 162 people on board.
So far, searchers have managed to recover 70 bodies from the sea, leaving 92 still unaccounted for. Over the weekend, navy divers tried to lift part of the fuselage of the plane using wire ropes and giant balloons. But the attempts failed after lines attached to the wreckage broke.
The chief of the Indonesian armed forces, General Moeldoko, ordered the military teams involved in the operation to pull out on Tuesday, said military spokesman Manahan Simorangkir.
Officials said that 19 of the 81 navy divers working on the recovery efforts had fallen ill with decompression sickness and would be taken for treatment at a hospital in Jakarta, the capital.
“I told them safety first. But as we know, soldiers, they are always working hard to find the bodies,” said Rear Adm. Widodo, commander of the Indonesian Navy’s western fleet. “They are not thinking about safety but about doing their duty.” The divers haven’t been able to see any more bodies inside the wreckage of the fuselage, Widodo said.
Officials had previously suggested that many of the missing human remains might be found inside the fuselage. Searchers have recovered at least 14 bodies from the fuselage site, including some that floated free during attempts to lift the wreckage, according to officials.
Indonesian aviation investigators are still trying to establish why Flight QZ8501 went down in an area of heavy thunderstorms last month while other planes nearby completed their journeys safely.
They have submitted their preliminary report into the crash, officials said Tuesday. But authorities have said they don’t plan to release it to the public.
-INDIA TODAY
