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)