Indonesian rescue personnel unload a coffin bearing a body recovered from the wreckage of the ill-fated Flight QZ8501 from a military plane in Surabaya. - AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto
JAKARTA: Indonesian salvage teams failed to raise the fuselage of AirAsia Flight 8501 from the sea bed Saturday, but recovered four more bodies from the wreckage of the crashed jet.
The bid to raise the fuselage came a day after divers were able to enter the main section of the plane, which crashed in the Java Sea last month, for the first time.
Difficult weather conditions for the past week had stopped rescuers reaching the main part of the Airbus A320-200 since it was spotted on the seabed by a military vessel earlier this month.
"We were not successful today. The sling snapped off so the main body fell back to the sea floor," S.B. Supriyadi, a rescue agency official, told AFP, adding several bodies fell from the fuselage when the piece of wreckage sunk once again.
The operation to lift the main body will resume Sunday.
The rescue agency official also said a sonar scan had detected an object "suspected to be the cockpit" of the plane about 500 metres away from the fuselage.
But the search teams will prioritise floating the main body before verifying the object suspected to be the cockpit, Supriyadi added.
Just after dawn Saturday, divers began descending to the sea floor to tie floatation bags to the fuselage, said Rasyid Kacong, the navy official overseeing the lifting operation from onboard the Banda Aceh warship.
Four bodies believed to have come from inside the fuselage were retrieved as the team tried to lift the main section, bringing the total number of bodies recovered to 69, officials said.
- Source: AFP
No comments:
Post a Comment