Malaysian officials have requested official assistance from more than a dozen countries in south-east and south Asia in a desperate bid to find missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, after new satellite data indicated the aircraft flew on for hours after it last made contact with civilian radar.
Eight days after the Boeing-777 vanished without any significant leads, authorities are searching for the plane along two possible flight corridors from the plane's last known location at 2.15am last Saturday over the Malacca strait — one stretching south from Indonesia towards the Indian Ocean, a vast expanse with very little radar coverage; and another north from Thailand up towards central Asia, a heavily militarised area with well-scrutinised airspace.
The defence and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said on Sunday that 15 countries have been contacted for assistance, including China, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Assistance will include satellite data and analysis, ground-search capabilities, radar data, and maritime and air deployment, Hishammuddin tweeted.
Australia and France have also been asked for help, he added, after authorities announced they would abandon their search-and-rescue missions in the South China Sea and Malacca strait and focus instead on the two corridors.
Hishamuddin's comments come a day after the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, surprised reporters with his first comments on the missing aircraft in a week by claiming that "deliberate action by someone on the plane" was the reason for MH370's disappearance, and that the investigation had been refocused to look into foul play by the passengers or crew.
Malaysian police had spent the weekend investigating the crew, passengers and engineers who may have had contact with MH370 before takeoff last Saturday at 12.41am, Hishammuddin confirmed.
Friends and family of the missing jet's 53-year-old captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had been questioned, along with experts, about the flight simulator Zaharie kept in his house.Police also searched the home of co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, although it was unclear if anything was confiscated.
Further announcements were expected on Sunday afternoon, when Malaysia's police chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, was due to speak to reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
