AirAsia search called off

All efforts to raise the wreck of crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 have been halted indefinitely, Indonesia's military announced on Tuesday.

"The operation has been ongoing for 30 days so the joint team has been pulled out," Rear Admiral Widodo, a naval officer managing the search and rescue operation, said.

"We apologize to the families of the victims. We tried our best to look for the missing victims," said Widodo.

The passenger plane, which crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 during severe weather, was making a short flight from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.

Only 70 bodies, of the 162 people who had been on board the flight, have been recovered.

Widodo said no victims had been found by searchers in the past two days.

Authorities had been hopeful of finding more passengers within the plane's main fuselage.

Rough seas

Rough seas and poor visibility have made searching the area difficult and hampered divers' efforts to retrieve more victims.

Rescue teams have been trying since Saturday to bring the fuselage of the Airbus A320-200 to the surface using giant inflatable balloons. The aircraft is lying on the sea floor at a depth of around 30 meters (98 meters).

Salvage teams were able to raise the aircraft's main body section to the surface for about two minutes on Saturday before the straps holding it broke.

The flight's two black box recorders have been recovered and are being analyzed to determine the cause of the crash.

jlw/ipj (AFP, Reuters