The remains of a baby were among those recovered from the site of a crashed Lion Air plane that plunged into the sea with 189 people aboard on Monday, national deputy police chief Ari Dono Sukmanto said on Tuesday (Oct 30).
Lion Air flight JT610 plunged into the Java Sea on Monday morning just minutes after taking off from Jakarta. It was headed for Pangkal Pinang city.
Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) said 178 adult passengers, one child, two babies, two pilots and six cabin crew were on the plane.
A total of 50 divers have been deployed in the search effort, said Muhammad Syaugi, head of Indonesia's national search and rescue agency Basarnas.
At least 10 bodies have been recovered so far and sent to the hospital for identification.
Fourteen bags of aircraft debris and personal belongings of those on board the plane have also been retrieved, including clothes, shoes and a wallet.
There is a strong smell coming from the clothing, shoes and other personal belongings of the passengers from #JT610. Search and rescue officials are inspecting, and hoping to answer more questions today https://t.co/AfQTcw4JUD pic.twitter.com/mWRCKiopLm
— Jack Board (@JackBoardCNA) 30 October 2018
Rescue officials have been focused on recovering the main part of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft - more specifically the plane's black box - as investigators try to determine the cause of the crash.
On Tuesday, diving operations started at 6am.
Update from BASARNAS: Ten bodies collected from #JT610 crash site. All debris from sea surface has been collected. 50 divers deployed and conditions good https://t.co/AfQTcw4JUD #LionAir pic.twitter.com/cOMHDh8Tek
— Jack Board (@JackBoardCNA) 30 October 2018
"We hope that the main body (of the plane) can be seen using our sonar technology. That is the priority," said Syaugi.
He added that the agency will conduct surface sweep and more diving as the weather in the crash site area, which is 15 nautical miles, is expected to be good for the next seven days.
Underwater beacons have also been deployed to trace the flight's black box recorders in a bid to uncover why an almost-new plane crashed minutes after take-off.
"Hopefully this morning we can find the wreckage or fuselage," Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of Indonesia's transport safety panel, told Reuters, adding that an underwater acoustic beacon was deployed to locate the main body of the plane.
The search and rescue agency added that four sonar detectors were also deployed in areas where aircraft debris had been found a day earlier off the shore of Karawang, West Java, and 15 vessels were scouring the sea surface.
Earlier, Yusuf Latif, the national search and rescue agency spokesman, said there were unlikely to be survivors.
Finding survivors "would be a miracle" judging by the condition of the recovered debris and body parts, Latif added.
Search & rescue personnel in #Karawang transport body parts they found drifting in the waters, of those on board crashed #LionAirJT610 to main ops post in #NorthJakarta pic.twitter.com/B3blY3j4Rz
— Chandni Vatvani (@ChandniCNA) 30 October 2018
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