Malaysia says jet crashed in sea, China wants evidence
Niluksi Koswanage/Siva Govindasamy(Reuters)
Kuala Lumpur, March 25, 2014 | UPDATED 08:44 IST
Two
Chinese Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 aircrafts used in the search for
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are towed on the tarmac of Perth
International Airport, March 25, 2014. Photo by Jason Reed(Reuters)
Early in the morning, just hours after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the plane had crashed in the Indian Ocean, an unidentified family member read out a statement at the Beijing hotel where many of the relatives of those on board were staying, denouncing the airline, the Malaysian government and military for "constantly trying to delay, hide and cover up the truth".
It was "an attempt to deceive the families of the passengers and an attempt to deceive the people of the world", said the statement, which was later posted on a Chinese microblog by the "Malaysia Airlines MH370 Family Committee".
In a later statement, the families said they would head to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing on Tuesday morning to "protest, seek the truth and the return of their family members."
The families, in a statement, said they would "take all possible means" to pursue the "unforgivable guilt" of the airline, the Malaysian government and the military.
"These despicable acts have not only fooled and devastated physically and mentally the families of our 154 Chinese passengers, at the same time they have also misled and delayed the rescue operation, wasted a lot of manpower, material resources and lost the most precious time for the rescue efforts," the unidentified family member told reporters.
"If our 154 loved ones on board have lost their precious lives on the plane because of this, then Malaysia Airlines, the Malaysia government and the Malaysia military are the real executioners who have killed our loved ones."
Bad weather and rough seas on Tuesday forced the suspension of the search for any wreckage of the missing Malaysian jetliner that officials are now sure crashed in the remote Indian Ocean off Australia with the loss of all 239 people on board.
On Monday night, there were hysterical scenes at the hotel, with some of the relatives wailing and being carried out on stretchers.
Malaysia Airlines has promised to take the relatives to Australia, the focal point of the search.
Australian Defence Minister David Johnston said Prime Minister Tony Abbott wanted to help the families, the majority of whom are from China.
"I know the prime minister is very, very concerned that we extend every possible courtesy," Johnston told Fairfax radio.
"They have had an emotional rollercoaster for two weeks, my heart goes out to them. We will do everything we can to give them some semblance of closure, in what we now know is a very serious disaster."
~Reuters
Malaysia says jet crashed in sea, China wants evidence
Malaysia said on Monday that a missing jetliner had crashed into the Indian Ocean, an announcement that was greeted with hysteria by Chinese relatives of those on board and a demand by China that Kuala Lumpur share all the evidence it had on the incident.
Read: Malaysia says Flight MH 370 lost in Indian Ocean, all onboard perished
Citing groundbreaking satellite-data analysis by the British company Inmarsat, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished more than a fortnight ago while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, had crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean.
His statement may go some way toward tamping down some of the more fevered speculation about the plane's fate, including one theory some grief-stricken relatives had seized on: that the plane had been hijacked and forced to land somewhere.
All 239 people on board were presumed dead, airline officials said on Monday.
Najib's announcement opens the way for what could be one of the most costly and challenging air crash investigations in history.
The launch of an official air crash investigation would give Malaysia power to coordinate and sift evidence, but it may still face critics, especially China, which had more than 150 citizens on board the missing plane and has criticised Malaysia over the progress of the search.
The Inmarsat data showed the Boeing 777's last position was in the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia, Najib said in a statement.
"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites," he said. "It is therefore, with deep sadness and regret, that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."
Read: Relatives erupt with grief after Malaysia says plane crashed
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng immediately demanded all relevant satellite-data analysis from Malaysia that demonstrated how Malaysia had reached its conclusion about the fate of the jet.
In a further sign the search was bearing fruit, the U.S. Navy was flying in its high-tech black box detector to the area.
The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens on board planes during flight. At crash sites, finding the black boxes soon is crucial because the locator beacons they carry fade out after 30 days.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8. No confirmed sighting of the plane has been made since and there is no clue what went wrong.
Attention and resources in the search for the plane had shifted from an initial focus north of the Equator to an increasingly narrowed stretch of rough sea in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from the original flight path.
Investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems. Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
That led them to focus on hijacking or sabotage, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.
Reuters
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