Malaysia said it will do “whatever it takes” to find a missing passenger jet as the search headed for its sixth day and yet another lead -- this one an e-mail investigated by Vietnamese authorities -- proved a dead end.
“Our immediate focus is to find the aircraft,” Acting Transport MinisterHishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur today.
“Unless we get the aircraft and the blackbox, it’s unlikely that we are able to answer a lot of speculative issues that have been raised out there.”
Twelve countries, dozens of planes and ships are scouring land and sea to find the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. aircraft that went missing with 239 people on board. Malaysia is widening the area being combed for signs of the plane -- missing since March 8 -- to include the Malacca Strait. That’s roughly in the opposite direction as the intended course of the Beijing-bound Boeing Co. 777-200 over the Gulf of Thailand.
Vietnam sent a crew today to search the Vung Tau area in the nation’s southeast after a person said he spotted what appeared to be a plane on fire and sent an e-mail to government officials. Earlier this week, an aircraft had alerted Hong Kong air traffic controllers about sighting metal debris in the sea near Vung Tau, Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority had said.
The absence of wreckage has kept alive various theories about the plane’s disappearance, from an accident to hijacking to sabotage. The plane’s position when it vanished March 8 may be in doubt, said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
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“When flying over water, in my opinion there is no such thing as 100 percent accurate technology of any kind,” Bloom said in an interview. “Not all of that information may have been getting back. It could have been distorted by occurrences still to be determined.”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: K. Oanh Ha in Hanoi at +84-4-3938-8940 oroha3@bloomberg.net; Chong Pooi Koon in Kuala Lumpur at +60-3-2302-7854 orpchong17@bloomberg.net; Ranjeetha Pakiam in Kuala Lumpur at +60-3-2302-7856 orrpakiam@bloomberg.net
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Chong Pooi Koon in Kuala Lumpur atpchong17@bloomberg.net; Ranjeetha Pakiam in Kuala Lumpur at rpakiam@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy atanandk@bloomberg.net
Source : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-11/malaysia-probes-hijack-to-sabotage-terror-not-ruled-out.html
Malaysia said it will do “whatever it takes” to find a missing passenger jet as the search headed for its sixth day and yet another lead -- this one an e-mail investigated by Vietnamese authorities -- proved a dead end.
“Our immediate focus is to find the aircraft,” Acting Transport MinisterHishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur today. “Unless we get the aircraft and the blackbox, it’s unlikely that we are able to answer a lot of speculative issues that have been raised out there.”
Twelve countries, dozens of planes and ships are scouring land and sea to find the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. aircraft that went missing with 239 people on board. Malaysia is widening the area being combed for signs of the plane -- missing since March 8 -- to include the Malacca Strait. That’s roughly in the opposite direction as the intended course of the Beijing-bound Boeing Co. 777-200 over the Gulf of Thailand.
Vietnam sent a crew today to search the Vung Tau area in the nation’s southeast after a person said he spotted what appeared to be a plane on fire and sent an e-mail to government officials. Earlier this week, an aircraft had alerted Hong Kong air traffic controllers about sighting metal debris in the sea near Vung Tau, Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority had said.
The absence of wreckage has kept alive various theories about the plane’s disappearance, from an accident to hijacking to sabotage. The plane’s position when it vanished March 8 may be in doubt, said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
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