03 January 2015 Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS)
3 January 2015, 7:45PM Singapore Time:- Indonesia has accepted Singapore’s offer of a Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team on 2 January 2015. At 1500 hours this afternoon, Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs Masagos Zukifli joined family members to send off the DVI team at Changi Airport as they departed for Surabaya ().
The DVI team, comprising two forensic experts from the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) and six officers from the Singapore Police Force (SPF), will assist our Indonesian counterparts in the identification of victims.
In addition, the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) Victory-class missile corvette RSS Valour, initially scheduled to depart for Singapore yesterday, was re-assigned to assist with the search operations after possible sightings by servicemen on board the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) Super Puma helicopter. It is now scheduled to depart for Singapore this evening.
All five RSN ships conducted search operations in the search area today. They have retrieved personal items and aircraft debris.