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Missing plane plunged into Indian Ocean - Malaysia PM
Mar 24, 201408:00 PM
The Prime Minister of Malaysia has confirmed that new data has emerged which points to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 having crashed into the Indian Ocean.
In a press conference this afternoon, Prime Minister Najib Razak told a press conference that the new information proves “beyond doubt” that the passenger flight had been lost and that it had to be assumed “beyond reasonable doubt” that no-one had survived.
He said: “I must inform you that according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
“We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost.”
The Malaysian Prime Minister said that satellite analysis pointed to Flight MH370 crashing in the southern Indian Ocean west of Perth.
Relatives of those on the missing flight were informed of the news by text message.
If confirmed, the news would be a major breakthrough in the unprecedented two-week struggle to find out what happened to Flight 370, which disappeared shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard.
As Razak spoke, airline representatives met with family members in Beijing. “They have told us all lives are lost,” one relative of a missing passenger told CNN.
The developments happened the same day as Australian officials announced they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.
One object is “a grey or green circular object,” and the other is “an orange rectangular object,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
The objects are the latest in a series of sightings, including “suspicious objects” reported earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was involved in search efforts in the same region, authorities said.
So far, nothing has been definitively linked to Flight 370.
Earlier, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s acting transportation minister, said only that “at the moment, there are new leads but nothing conclusive.”
A reporter on board the Chinese plane for China’s official Xinhua news agency said the search team saw “two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers,” the agency reported Monday.
The Chinese plane was flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia’s west coast when it made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
- Agencies
