Jakarta Globe & AFP, Dec 30, 2014
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| This aerial view taken from an Indonesian search and rescue aircraft over the Java Sea shows floating debris spotted in the same area as other items being investigated by authorities. (AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo) |
Jakarta.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, or Barsanas, has confirmed with
“95 percent” certainty that the items spotted during an aerial search on
Tuesday is debris from the missing Indonesia AirAsia plane.
“We can
confirm that with 95 percent certainty that what we found are the objects from
the plane QZ8501,” Barsanas chief Bambang Soelistyo told a press conference.
Items
resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects were spotted in the
sea during an aerial search for Flight QZ8501 about midday.
BeritaSatu
TV reported Indonesian rescue teams found the debris 194 kilometers off the
coast of Pangkalan Bun.
Bambang
said vessels were on their way to the site to collect the debris and would take
it to Pangkalan Bun.
“We’re also
sending a task force of 11 divers from the Navy and 10 divers from Basarnas,”
he said. “We’re leaving it up to the KNKT [The National Committee for
Transportation Safety] to finalize the investigation of the debris.”
Local media
have reported six bodies have been retrieved from the sea, but the Jakarta
Globe has been unable to confirm the number.
Relatives
of the 155 passengers and seven crew members burst into tears and hugged each
other after footage of a body was broadcast during the Basarnas press
conference in Jakarta. AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes tweeted he was rushing to Surabaya
to be with the victims’ families.
Bambang
told reporters that a “shadow” on the seabed spotted by an Air Force plane was
believed to be the missing AirAsia jet.
“At 12:50
the air force Hercules found an object described as a shadow at the bottom of
the sea in the form of a plane,” he said.
Earlier on
Tuesday, an AFP photographer on the search flight that spotted the debris said
he had seen objects in the sea resembling a life raft, life jackets and long
orange tubes.
Indonesian
air force official Agus Dwi Putranto told reporters: “We spotted about 10 big
objects and many more small white-colored objects which we could not
photograph.”
“The
position is 10 kilometers from the location the plane was last captured by radar,”
he said.
Agus
displayed 10 photos of objects resembling a plane door, emergency slide, and a
square box-like object.
“It is not
really clear … it could be the wall of the plane or the door of the plane,” he
said.
“Let’s pray
that those objects are what we are really trying to find,” he said in Pangkalan
Bun in Central Kalimantan.
Indonesia
AirAsia flight QZ8501 disappeared Sunday morning over the Java Sea with 162
people on board enroute from Surabaya to Singapore.
The search
is focused on waters around the islands of Bangka and Belitung in the Java Sea,
across from Kalimantan.
Related Article:
 |
Family
members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysian air carrier
AirAsia flight
QZ8501 react after watching news reports showing an unidentified body
floating
in the Java sea, inside the crisis-centre set up at Juanda International
Airport in Surabaya on Dec. 30, 2014. (AFP Photo/Manan Vatsyayana)
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