12 more bodies retrieved from AirAsia crash arrive in Surabaya for identification

Twelve more bodies of those aboard a crashed AirAsia jetliner, which were retrieved from the Java Sea off Indonesia's Central Kalimantan, have been brought to Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java, on Saturday for identification.

All the bodies were put in white coffins marked with the number from 019 to 030. A brief ceremony was held before the bodies were loaded into a C-130 Hercules transport plane.

The command post set up at an air base in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan province, had transferred 18 bodies to Surabaya for identification and post-mortem examination carried out by the Disaster Victim Investigation agency.

Meanwhile, a senior official at Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency said earlier Saturday that the search operation was focused on locating the wreckage of Flight QZ8501 and its black boxes.

"The priority is now focused on finding black boxes of the plane so as to help the National Transportation Safety Committee ( KNKT) carry out an investigation into the cause of the crash," SB Supriyadi told Xinhua.

He said Indonesian vessels have spotted a black shadow of possible wreckage of the Airbus A320-200 on Friday.

An international search operation, joined by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, South Korea and the United States, has begun since the ill-fated plane with 162 people on board went missing on Sunday.

Some 30 bodies of the victims have been retrieved since debris and bodies from the plane were spotted on Tuesday.

Russia joined the search on Friday by sending an amphibian jet and an Ilyushin Il-76 plane.

The amphibian plane, equipped with submersible cameras, would be tasked with deploying divers to the wreckage of plane.

Supriyadi said the Russian team also brought an undersea scanning system that would help search the debris and black boxes.

Flight QZ8501 crashed in the Indonesian waters Sunday morning soon after it lost contact with the air traffic control en route from Surabaya to Singapore.

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