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AirAsia QZ8501: Multiple bodies, wreckage recovered in search for missing plane
Updated about an hour agoWed 31 Dec 2014, 7:06am
Photo: Members of the Indonesian air force show items retrieved from the Java sea during search and rescue operations for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. (AFP: Bay Ismoyo)
Related Story: US warship to join search for missing AirAsia aircraft
Map: Indonesia
An Indonesian warship has recovered three bodies from the sea in the search for the AirAsia jet, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency says.
Earlier in the day, a navy spokesman told the media a warship had retrieved more than 40 bodies but later retracted the statement saying it was a miscommunication by staff.
Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyon said: "Today we evacuated three bodies and they are now in the warship Bung Tomo".
An Indonesian air force plane spotted items resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects in the search for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 earlier in the day.
AirAsia has released a statement confirming the debris found is from flight QZ8501.
Indonesian president Joko Widodo said all available ships and helicopters would be deployed to the area where the debris was found.
He urged the families of the passengers and crew to "be strong as they faced this difficult moment".
Red and white debris spotted
Earlier, authorities gave media an update in which they showed a video of a body floating in the Java Sea.
"Based on the observation by search and rescue personnel, significant things have been found such as a passenger door and cargo door," Djoko Murjatmodjo, director general of air transportation at the transportation ministry, said.
Photo: Items spotted in the Java Sea during the search for AirAsia QZ8501. (AFP: Bay Ismoyo)
"It's in the sea, 160 kilometres south-west of Pangkalan Bun," he said, referring to the town in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
He said aircraft searching for the missing aircraft had sighted "red and white-coloured" debris off the coast of Kalimantan.
Eleven divers were sent to the site and will search in an area of water about 25-30 metres deep.
There was no word on the possibility of any survivors and the plane has not been found, althoughIndonesian authorities have spotted a shadow under the water they believed was the aircraft.
Pictures of floating bodies were broadcast on television and relatives of the missing gathered at a crisis centre in Surabaya.
Several people collapsed in grief and were helped away, a Reuters reporter said.
"You have to be strong," the mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini, said as she comforted relatives.
"They are not ours, they belong to God."
A navy spokesman said a plane door, oxygen tanks and one body had been recovered and taken away by helicopter for tests.