Malaysia Says Jet Crashed in Sea, China Wants Evidence
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - 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.
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, Reuters reported.
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."
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 US 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.
