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Indonesia says searches for Air Asia flight victims to continue

The airliner had 162 people on board, but only 90 bodies have been recovered

SINGAPORE, January 28. /TASS/. Indonesia’s authorities are not going to stop searching for victims in the crash of an Air Asia plane, head of the national search and rescue agency Bambang Soelistyo said on Wednesday.

He confirmed the recent statement from the country’s military about finalizing the search operation, saying the statement referred to the military’s involvement only.

Indonesian forces had concentrated their efforts on search for bodies of victims. The airliner had 162 people on board, but only 90 bodies have been recovered. Many bodies are believed to be in the fuselage. Divers have been examining the part of the airbus, but all the attempts of specialists to raise the fragment from the seabed were unsuccessful.

Under the international regulations, authorities must present a preliminary report about crash causes to the International Civil Aviation Organization in 30 days, on January 28.

An official from the national transport safety committee, Nurkahyo Utomo, said a human factor and a technical fault were priority versions. A terrorist attack was ruled out, he added. No voices of other people or suspicious sounds were heard in the flight recordings, Utomo said.

Contact with the A320-200 was lost and it disappeared from radar screens 40 minutes after it took off on a flight from the city of Surabaya to Singapore on December 2, 2014.