Xi mourns victims of plane crash

Moment of silence observed at meeting; DNA matching has been completed

President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders observed a moment of silence on Monday to mourn the victims of the China Eastern Airlines plane crash.

The moment of silence, proposed by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was observed at the start of a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in Beijing.

Flight MU5735, with 132 people on board, crashed into a mountainous area in Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on March 21. All people aboard were confirmed dead on Saturday.

After the crash, Xi immediately ordered the launch of an emergency response, all-out search and rescue efforts, and proper handling of the aftermath.

Rescuers and investigators announced on Monday that DNA matching for all 132 victims had been completed. Remains and belongings of the victims have been sent to the local funeral home, properly stored and classified, and will later be transferred.

After the crash, the Ministry of Public Security quickly drew up a work plan to identify the victims and established a special platform for DNA comparison, according to Liu Kaihui, an official with the Institute of Forensic Science of China of the ministry.

Public security officers in more than 20 provincial-level regions were involved in collecting the DNA samples of the victims and their family members, he said at a news conference in Wuzhou on Monday.

"Our institute also dispatched a team of 30 experts to the crash site, carrying out on-site investigations together with more than 200 forensic science workers in Guangxi," Liu said. In addition to DNA matching techniques, fingerprint experts have also compared the fingerprints taken at the scene to confirm the victims' identities.

Zhu Tao, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's aviation safety office, said that as of Monday noon, the search and rescue team had canvassed an area of about 370,000 square meters in the core and neighboring areas of the crash site, and had collected 36,001 pieces of aircraft debris and other fragments.

Five drone teams were deployed to carry out search missions by taking photos on the margin of the core areas, searching an area of nearly 9.55 million square meters, he said.

Zheng Xi, head of the Guangxi Fire and Rescue Brigade, said the search and rescue team is now prioritizing the search for victims' belongings and aircraft debris, as both black boxes have been found.

As decoding and analysis work for the two black boxes is ongoing, other avenues for investigation are also progressing, Zhu said, adding that the investigation team is collecting evidence such as aircraft debris, accident-related video clips and witnesses's accounts.

To fully discover the truth, "it is insufficient to rely only on data from the black boxes in an air crash investigation", he said.

Shu Ping, director of the China Academy of Civil Aviation Science and Technology's Aviation Safety Institute, said the investigation of an airplane crash also involves information collected at the crash site and experimental verification. "Many objects at the crash site could be used to analyze the situation, such as the condition of the engine system," he told CAAC News.

Cao Yin contributed to this story.