3 more bodies found from AirAsia wreckage

The body of an AirAsia QZ8501 passenger is unloaded from a US Navy helicopter from the USS Sampson at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan January 4, 2015. A multinational team searching for a crashed AirAsia passenger jet found another large underwater object believed to be part of the plane, but persistent bad weather hampered efforts on Sunday to locate its black box recorders and recover bodies of victims.

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia - An Indonesian pilot taking part in the multinational search operation said in Pangkalan Bun on Sunday that three more bodies were found in AirAsia crash site off Borneo coast.

Lieut. Col. Setiawan, a pilot of Indonesian Air Forces' CN 295 surveillance plane, said those bodies were initially found by a Japanese navy ship Konami at about 7.00 am local time.

"The ship contacted us in the plane about the finding. Soon we got there at the location, where had already been marked with smoke by SH 60 Seahawk helicopter from USS Sampsons," Setiawan told Xinhua at the command post to evacuate debris and bodies of passengers of crashed plane.

The officer said the evacuation was hindered by strong wind that blew up to 20 knots that made the Seahawk hardly able to lift up those bodies.

"The helicopter hovered for a while, and circling around the location a few times and managed to pick up them," he said.

Setiawan said the bodies lied close to each other.

He added that after contacting other search teams around and made coordination with their commander in USS Sampsons, Seahawk pilots brought those bodies to USS Sampsons.

The command post had sent 30 AirAsia plane passengers' bodies to Surabaya for further identification process.

AirAsia QZ8501 crashed in Indonesian waters on Dec 28 enroute for Singapore from Surabaya.

The plane carried 162 people onboard.