TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Island in focus: 12 plane crash victims identified, 42 more to go
The identification of victims from a Trigana Air plane that crashed last week in Pegunungan Bintang regency, Papua, has encountered slow progress as the National Policeâs Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team, as of the weekend, had only managed to identify 12 out of the 54 bodies recovered from the crash site
Change Size
T
he identification of victims from a Trigana Air plane that crashed last week in Pegunungan Bintang regency, Papua, has encountered slow progress as the National Police's Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team, as of the weekend, had only managed to identify 12 out of the 54 bodies recovered from the crash site.
'Three days after starting the [victim] identification process, our team has managed to identify 12 victims. Four bodies were identified on the first day, three on the second day and five on the third day,' the police's Medical Center head Brig. Gen. Arthur Tampi said on Saturday.
The Trigana Air ATR 42 plane was on its way from Sentani Airport in Jayapura at 2:22 p.m. on Sunday and was supposed to have arrived at Oksibil Airport at 3:15 p.m. The bodies of all 54 people aboard were finally found on Tuesday in a forested area near Oksibil city of Papua.
Arthur said the DVI team, as of the weekend, had tried to identify 27 bodies but had only managed to name 12 of them. He said the DNA samples taken from the first 15 unidentified bodies had also been sent to the National Police's Forensic Laboratory in Jakarta for DNA testing. 'Many of the bodies were severely burned, making it difficult for us to identify them using primary or secondary data,' he said.
