Saturday, August 30, 2008 DVI teams prepare to release more bodies of Stars victims
AFTER an additional 11 bodies from the mv Princess of the Stars accident were identified through DNA matching, more bodies may be released next week.
“The identification board is meeting and reviewing the additional DNA matches we have received from Bosnia,” said Supt. Anthony Obenza, chief of the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime-Visayas Field Office (PCTC-VFO).
Obenza said that DNA matches arrive in Cebu “every other day” from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Once DNA matches arrive from the ICMP headquarters, the identification board reviews the matches and certifies the victims’ identities, before the bodies are finally released to the families.
As the disaster victim identification (DVI) teams continue to send DNA samples to the ICMP headquarters, officials expect heavy DVI work to start in October.
“We expect the bodies to arrive in October, and work might well end sometime in January,” said Obenza.
The retrieval of bodies from the Princess of the Stars was suspended a few days after it sank last June 21, when the vessel’s cargo of toxic pesticides was reported.
Out of more than 800 passengers and crew, fewer than 60 survived. A little over 200 bodies have been sent to Cebu, with hundreds of others still believed trapped inside the sunken ferry.
Considering the number of bodies to process, Obenza said that the DVI’s work could end in January next year, if the bulk of the bodies start arriving in early October.
While the DVI teams wait for the bodies to arrive from the sunken vessel, they will continue trying to identify the bodies that arrived in Cebu in the earlier months.
So far, 35 bodies have been released in Cebu through positive DNA matching. Aside from the earlier 24 matches, the identification board has confirmed an additional 11 matches.
However, out of the 48 claimed in Cebu, one adult female was not a passenger of the mv Princess of the Stars.
A total of 312 bone samples and 1,663 DNA samples have already been sent to the ICMP headquarters.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) DVI team has also collected 355 10-print sets of fingerprints and 257 single-print sets of fingerprints from the bodies.
“Through the fingerprints, we can strengthen the identification process of the dead,” said Obenza. (EPB)
