Chinese vessels set out for new search areas for MH370
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E-mail Xinhua, March 19, 2014
Chinese vessels set on Wednesday for new search areas to hunt the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner when a multinational search mission for MH370 enters its 12th day.
Nine vessels, including China's largest rescue ship Haixun 01, will sail off from Singapore to waters southeast of the Bay of Bengal and west of Indonesia, covering an area of 300,000 square km, said China national maritime search and rescue center.
According to the plan, four vessels heading north will pass through Strait of Malacca to reach the Bay of Bengal, while five others will travel south passing the Sunda Strait, forming a search area of 300,000 square km.
"None of the military radars in the country has detected a trace of the missing plane. Furthermore, no trace of the MH370 Airline has been found from the data scrutinized thus far from radars stationed at the airports in the Maldives," Maldivian Aviation Security Command head Colonel Mohamed Ziyad said.
Maldives police has launched an investigation into reports that residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll have seen a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
They said that it was a white aircraft, with red stripes across it, which is what the Malaysia Airlines flights typically look like.
Eyewitnesses from the Kuda Huvadhoo concurred that the airplane was traveling North to South-East, towards Addu, the Southern tip of the Maldives. They also noted the incredibly loud noise that the flight made when it flew over the island.
Indian officials at the Andaman Islands in southeast Bay of Bengal have indicated that any speculation of the missing MH370 to have entered the area is highly improbable.
The daily Andaman Sheekha quoted unnamed officials as saying that the Andaman and Nicobar Command of the Indian Armed Forces has already confirmed that there is no evidence of an air crash on or near any of the islands in the archipelago, lying over 1,000 km off the Indian mainland.
"Today, we have come across reports that suggest that there are runways in the Andamans where the large Boeing 777-200 ER could have landed ... Both runways are considered extremely sensitive and are well protected," an official here was quoted as saying.
Andaman and Nicolar Islands, a union territory of India, have two runways, one at Car Nicobar and another at Port Blair.
Car Nicobar is a full-fledged air base of the Indian Air Force which operates assets from it routinely. The other runway is at the semi-commercial, semi-military Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair here, the main port of the Andamans.
Australia continued to coordinate a search in the southern Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Center Australia (RCC Australia) confirmed on Wednesday.
According to a latest statement from RCC Australia, a New Zealand P-3 Orion and a United States Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft are expected to join the search.
The Boeing 777-200 aircraft, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, mysteriously disappeared from radar in the early hours of March 8.
