All 54 bodies of passengers of the Trigana Air plane have been recovered from the crash site and are currently at the Oksibil regional hospital in Pegunungan Bintang regency, Papua.

'€œThis afternoon at 6 p.m. local time, the remains of all victims have been placed in 47 body bags and recovered from the location. They have arrived at the Oksibil regional hospital. There were 54 people in the plane, including crew members, but all of their remains were placed in 47 bags,'€ said Pegunungan Bintang Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Yunus Wally, when reached by The Jakarta Post in Oksibil.

All the remains, which were to be airlifted, had to be transported by land due to bad weather around Oksibil in Pegunungan Bintang, where the Trigana Air ATR 42 plane crashed on Sunday.

The SAR team began the recovery process at 8 a.m. and all the body bags had been transported by 4 p.m. Only four bodies were airlifted to Jayapura, as they had already been moved from the crash site to Oksibil.

As many as 30 men were needed to carry a body bag for the four-hour hike from the crash site to a post on the roadside, from where the body bags were carried by car to Oksibil.

Four of the body bags have been transported to Jayapura by a Trigana Air ATR 42 aircraft, which arrived there at 5:20 p.m. On board the plane were Cenderawasih Military Command chief Maj. Gen. Fransen G. Siahaan, Papua Police chief Brig. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw, Jayapura Airbase commander Col. Made Surtisna and PT Trigana Air operational manager Benny Sumaryanto.

The body bags were then placed inside caskets and officially handed over from the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) head Air Marshal FHB Soelistyo to Waterpauw at the Jayapura Airbase in Sentani.

The remains will later undergo an identification process by the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team from the National Police and Papua Police headquarters at the Bhayangkara Police Hospital in Jayapura.

Yunus said the 350-strong joint SAR team, consisting of members of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and National Police as well as volunteers who were involved in the recovery, have been withdrawn to Oksibil city after transporting all the body bags.

'€œTomorrow morning, the SAR team will return to the crash site to sift through debris to look for victims'€™ belongings and the flight data recorder [FDR], which is part of the black box, as only the flight cockpit recorder [FCR] has been found,'€ said Yunus.

It was reported earlier that the plane also carried Rp 6.5 billion (US$470,000) in cash belonging to the Social Affairs Ministry, which was planned to be distributed to 6,000 underprivileged residents of the regency. Police said earlier that some of the money was in four bags carried by Jayapura postal office employees on the plane, had been burned.

In Oksibil, Soelistyo handed the FCR to the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT). '€œI handed over the black box to KNKT at Oksibil Airport,'€ Soelistyo said in Jayapura.

The DVI team has deployed 10 personnel to identify the victims, five of them from the Papua Police and five from the National Police headquarters.

Three of them will be placed at the Oksibil regional hospital and seven at the Bhayangkara Police Hospital.

'€œThe DVI team has taken DNA samples from victims'€™ families, 26 samples in Oksibil and 48 samples in Jayapura,'€ said Paulus.

A joint SAR team was at the hangar at the Jayapura Airbase at the Sentani Airport to receive the body bags.

As many as 28 ambulances were dispatched to the airport to transport the body bags from helicopters and take them to the Bhayangkara Police Hospital.

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