Crash victims' burial on Jan. 19

Crash victims' burial on Jan. 19

JAKARTA (JP): The remains of 104 victims of the SilkAir
airplane which plunged into the Musi River, South Sumatra, last
month will be buried on Jan. 19, an air force official said
yesterday.

Commander of the Palembang Air Force Base Lt. Col. Yanuwardi
said Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto and
Singapore Communications Minister Mah Bow Tan agreed the remains
would be buried in Palembang, capital of South Sumatra.

"The remains will be buried on Jan. 19 in Kebun Bunga
district, about four kilometers from the airport," Yanuwardi
told The Jakarta Post by phone.

All passengers and crew aboard the SilkAir Boeing 737-300 were
killed when the 10-month old plane crashed into an estuary in the
river during a regular flight from Jakarta to Singapore.

SilkAir is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines that operates
short-range flights around Southeast Asia.

Palembang, 60 kilometers upriver from the crash site, has been
the official rescue command post throughout the search and rescue
operation.

Yanuwardi said 104 coffins would be used. Just one passenger
has been identified.

About half of the plane has been recovered in small pieces,
and both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder,
commonly referred to as the blackbox, have been found.

They have been sent to the United States for analysis to help
determine why the plane, on a routine flight, fell out of the sky
in clear weather without any distress calls.

Yanuwardi said a Singaporean dredger Moshasi, which is still
at the crash site, collected five truckloads of aircraft debris
and some body parts yesterday.

The search was formally called off Monday but the dredger will
stay at the site until Jan. 12. (10)