by Abu Hanifah
JAKARTA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has halted the identification of recovered bodies of those aboard a Lion Air flight that crashed in western Indonesia late last month, but promised insurance funds would be delivered to families of all the victims.
As of Friday, the Indonesian police's Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) unit managed to identify 125 individuals from a total of 189 passengers and crews onboard the Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft which crashed in West Java waters on Oct. 29.
"As of now we have received 195 body bags and identified 666 body parts," Head of Indonesian Police Health and Medical Center (Pusdokes) Arthur Tampi said.
He added that the police would identify more should they receive new body bags related to the plane crash.
Tampi said 16 individuals on board the ill-fated flight were identified on Friday, including a body part of the Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja.
His body part was confirmed by the DVI through DNA analysis.
The identified passengers and crews included 89 male and 36 females, Tampi said.
The JT 610 flight was carrying 178 adults, one toddler, two babies and eight crews when it crashed in West Java waters shortly after taking off from the Jakarta international airport on Oct. 29.
DVI chief Lisda Cancer claimed the process has identified passengers who sat in all sections inside the crashed plane. She said that the DVI team has mapped the seats of passengers whose bodies have been identified.
"They sat in the front, back, left and right sides. The identified body of the pilot has proved that we managed to identify bodies from the entire plane, not just those at the back or in the middle part of the plane," she said.
All of passengers, including the remaining 64 yet to be identified, would receive insurance funds of 1.3 billion rupiah (about 89,300 U.S. dollars) each person, Lion Air Group Operational Director Daniel Putut Adi Kuncoro said.
"We assure that the insurance funds will be delivered to all of their heirs based on the existing law," Daniel said on Friday.
The Lion Air would send data of the 64 unidentified passengers and crews to the government's center of population and civilian registration office so as to get the correct heirs of the passengers and crews.
The insurance funds would be handed over in bank accounts, witnessed by lawyers and representatives from the court.
The Indonesian Transportation Safety Agency (KNKT) said earlier that the crash was allegedly caused by a glitch in the plane's automatic flight control that prevents plane from encountering stall condition.
KNKT would announce the results of its analysis of the plane's Flight Data Recorder (FDR) on Nov. 28. The agency managed to extract the plane's last 69 hours of flights, including the last four flights that experienced the glitch.
