Indonesia vows 'all-out effort' in search for AirAsia victims

THURSDAY, JANUARY 01, 2015

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AFP) - Indonesian searchers promised an "all-out effort" Thursday to locate bodies from AirAsia Flight QZ8501 as international investigators joined the hunt for the ill-fated plane.

Seven bodies have so far been retrieved in the search for the Airbus A320-200, which crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people on board during a storm Sunday en route from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Two of the dead -- one male and one female -- have been identified and will be handed over to relatives after formal confirmation Thursday, police said.
Rough weather Wednesday hampered efforts to locate and retrieve more bodies from the sea off the island of Borneo, but conditions improved briefly Thursday morning.
"The weather is clear today. We're making an all-out effort to search for bodies and locate the fuselage," search and rescue official Sunarbowo Sandi told AFP from Pangkalan Bun, a town on Borneo with the nearest airstrip to the crash site.