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Chinese Families of Missing MH370 Passengers Protest


Malaysia: Plane's Last Location West of Australia
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Watch related report from VOA's Carolyn Presutti.

Angry relatives of the passengers on board the missing Malaysian jetliner protested in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing Tuesday, as the search for the plane was suspended due to bad weather.

Around 100 Chinese family members held signs and demanded to know the "truth" about the plane, which Malaysian authorities have now concluded crashed into a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean.

In some cases, the protesters called Malaysian government officials "liars" and "murderers." After police prevented them from reaching nearby journalists who were blocked from the protest, some of the protesters clashed with police.

"What are you doing? I want to go and find those Malaysians. Who am I supposed to wait for? Why have I been waiting an hour already? I've been waiting for 18 days," a relative said. "What's the point?"

Two-thirds of the 239 people on board the plane were from China, and many of their family members say they will not believe the Malaysian government's conclusions until officials provide proof.

But proof is not likely to come soon, since Australian authorities were forced Tuesday to delay the search for 24 hours because of high waves, strong winds and dense clouds.

Also Tuesday, Malaysian officials provided more details about how they determined the flight crashed, hours after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8.

Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein explained the judgement was made using a highly technical analysis of automated signals sent from the jet to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat, a British company.

The signals continued for several hours after the plane's other communications systems mysteriously stopped working, providing investigators with a rough location of where the jet flew.

Hishammuddin said while the final location of the jet is not known, the search has been narrowed to the southern part of the southern corridor, where possible debris has been spotted in satellite photos. He said the search in the northern corridor has been called off.

Earlier, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya acknowledged "we do not know why, (and) we do not know how" the tragedy occurred. But he said there is no evidence of any survivors. "It's very evident that the aircraft ended its flight in the middle of the south Indian Ocean. We just have to follow the evidence being presented to us. What we did yesterday was to share that as quickly as possible to the next of kin," he said.

Australian Defense Minister David Johnston said Malaysia's analysis is the "best information we've got right now." But he cautioned the flight remains "a mystery" and that "virtually everything is speculation" until debris is recovered and identified.

"It is a very, very difficult task and can I tell you this deployment that you can see behind me, and all of the aircraft that I have named, is probably one of the largest efforts you'll ever see in terms of maritime surveillance and joint operations from China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, United States, Korea etcetera," stated Johnston.

A final conclusion about what happened on flight MH370 likely cannot be made until the plane's flight data recorder, or "black box" is located.

The U.S. Navy on Monday said it is sending a black box detector to aid in the search for the plane. The Navy says the "Towed Pinger Locator" could detect the missing airplane's black box to a depth of about 6,100 meters.

Investigators are not ruling out anything, including catastrophic mechanical failure, pilot sabotage or terrorism.
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