(tribunnews.com)

Three victims of the fatal Aviastar airplane crash have been identified by the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team at Bhayangkara Hospital in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

"They will be handed over to their families to be buried," said the South and West Sulawesi Police chief, Inspector General Pudji Hartanto Iskandar, on Wednesday as quoted by tempo.co.

According to Pudji, the DVI team, which is currently still processing seven other victims, had to work extra hard as the bodies were badly burned. However, he said that it had set a target to complete the identification process in one day using various methods, including using fingerprints, teeth and DNA comparison.

Aviastar spokesperson Sherly Silvana said that the airline was currently waiting for the identification results from the DVI team. Particularly for the crew victims, there will be a handover ceremony of the corpses from airline representatives to the victims' families.

National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) head Soerjanto Tjahjono said that the plane's debris and black box had provided sufficient evidence to conduct an investigation. As for the plane body and the emergency locator transmitter (ELT), they were not crucial, especially as the latter was supposedly destroyed in the crash, he added.

The investigation is estimated to take no more than 12 months.

The Aviastar airplane lost contact with air-traffic controllers 11 minutes after taking off from Masamba in South Sulawesi in good weather on Friday. It was headed for Makassar, the provincial capital, and was carrying three crew members and seven passengers.

After searching for three days, the search and rescue team found the crash site on Mt Latimojong in Luwu regency, around 2,700 meters above sea level. (nov/kes)(++++)

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