PANGKALAN BUN (Indonesia) — Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) chief Moeldoko yesterday visited Pangkalan Bun — the coastal town serving as the holding area for bodies recovered during the search for flight QZ8501 crash victims — for the first time since the Dec 28 tragedy, as teams scouring the ocean for the wreckage of the AirAsia jet found two new metal objects and two more bodies yesterday.

As the search entered its 10th day, officials said there is still no sign of the black box flight recorders from the plane.

At a press conference, General Moeldoko gave his assurance that the Indonesian military will spare no effort in retrieving the bodies of the victims. “The soldiers have done their best. Sometimes, they even ignored their (own) safety.”

He added: “I feel the emotions of the victims’ families deeply, how they long for their loved ones who are still not found.”

The military chief had flown into Pangaklan Bun in central Kalimantan at 2pm (Singapore time), accompanied by senior TNI officers and the Indonesian police as well as several foreign military commanders. They took off on four helicopters in heavy rain and strong winds and headed to the sea. Gen Moeldoko landed on an Indonesia ship and toured the vessel before heading off to visit United States rescue ship USS Sampson.

The TNI chief said he wanted to allow the families of the crash victims to visit the area at sea where their loved ones had perished to sprinkle flowers, an act Indonesians believe will bring peace to the deceased, but did not say when this would happen.

AirAsia flight QZ8501, with 162 people on board, crashed on Dec 28 into the Java Sea en route to Singapore from Surabaya.

During his visit, Gen Moeldoko also took the opportunity to thank the foreign military personnel taking part in the search effort, which had recovered 39 bodies as of yesterday.

Mr Supriyadi, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency’s director of operations, said aerial search efforts along Kalimantan’s southern coast had so far failed to find any debris or bodies washed up on shore.

He added that waves as high as 3m had hampered divers’ efforts to find traces of the plane underwater. “We must find the black box and the main wreckage because there might be more bodies still inside the plane,” Mr Supriyadi said, adding that two more ships will join the search today.

Meanwhile, Mr Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, the head of the search and rescue agency, told a news conference in Jakarta that a US Navy ship located two more metal objects using sonar signals, though it is not known yet if they are part of the missing plane. These would add to the five large objects, believed to have been part of the plane, detected so far, Reuters quoted him as saying.

The bad weather also forced the search area to be expanded as strong currents pushed debris and made it difficult to reach suspected chunks of the fuselage on the ocean floor.