Mystery deepens in search for flight MH370 (update 2)
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The fate of flight MH370 remains a mystery this morning, after it was revealed that debris found floating in the sea is not part of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.
Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) told a press conference on Monday that flotsam found near Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island does not belong to flight MH370, and that the search continues for the missing aircraft and 239 people onboard.
“Unfortunately, we have not found anything any objects belonging to the aircraft, let alone the plane itself,” the DCA’s director-general Azharuddin Abdul Rahman was quoted saying by the New Straits Times newspaper on Monday.
Earlier yesterday morning it was reported that part of the aircraft’s door could have been discovered floating among the debris, but this was also denied.
“No object was picked up. There was another report claiming that the tail of the plane was found, but they were only logs tied together,” Rahman said.
It has also emerged that two oil slicks detected off Vietnam’s south coast are also unrelated to to MH370. Samples of the oil were sent away for analysis, but have since been found not to contain jet fuel.
The search and rescue efforts will now be expanded to include larger areas of the South China Sea, the mainland of Peninsular Malaysia and even the Malacca Strait, off the country’s west coast, amid reports the aircraft had turned back towards Malaysia.
Forty ships and 34 aircraft from Australia, New Zealand, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines and US are all now involved in the mission to locate the aircraft, which was last tracked off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, flying towards the south coast of Vietnam.
It has been more than 72 hours since contact with flight MH370 was lost. All 227 passengers and 12 crew remain missing, including 158 Chinese nationals. And the Chinese government put pressure on Malaysia yesterday, saying it needed to “speed up” its efforts to locate the missing aircraft.
“We hope Malaysia can fully understand China, especially the mood of the Chinese passengers’ families and speed up investigation, search and rescue efforts,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Qin Gang, was quoted saying by Xinhua at a news briefing in Beijing.
“The missing plane belongs to the Malaysian Airlines, so it is reasonable that the Malaysian side takes the major responsibility of the search and rescue work.”
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