Search for long-missing flight MH370 suspended: Malaysia minister

Short Url
Updated 03 April 2025
Follow

Search for long-missing flight MH370 suspended: Malaysia minister

  • The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Kuala Lumpur: The latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been suspended, Kuala Lumpur’s transport minister said, more than a decade after the plane went missing.
“They have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year,” Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a voice recording sent to AFP on Thursday by his aide.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has not been found.
Loke’s comments come just one month after authorities said the search had resumed, following earlier failed attempts that covered vast swathes of the Indian Ocean.
An initial Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometers (46,300 square miles) in the Indian Ocean over three years, but found hardly any trace of the plane other than a few pieces of debris.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, led an unsuccessful hunt in 2018, before agreeing to launch a new search this year.
“Right now, it’s not the season,” Loke said in the recording, which was made during an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday.
“Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate,” Loke said, referring to the wreckage of the plane.


Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, ​targeting energy systems and injuring at least seven people in the capital Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, officials said.
“Hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles targeted energy systems, depriving people of power, heating, and water,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
Two people were hurt in a “massive” attack on Kyiv, which also hit various buildings, Mayor Vitali ‌Klitschko said.
Klitschko ‌said on Telegram there had been ​hits ‌on ⁠both residential ​and non-residential ⁠buildings on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city.
Fragments had fallen near two residential buildings in one district, but no fire had broken out.
Reuters witnesses heard explosions resound in the city.
Four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, were hurt in a missile and drone attack on the southeastern ⁠city of Dnipro and surrounding district, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha ‌said on Telegram.
One person was ‌hurt in a drone attack on ​the southern city of Odesa on ‌the Black Sea, which also damaged an infrastructure facility and ‌an apartment building where a fire broke out at an upper floor, head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak said.
Lysak also said that a fire engulfed pavilions at one of the city’s markets and damaged ‌a supermarket building.
Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said that energy infrastructure was damaged in Odesa district.
’BLOW TO ⁠PEACE EFFORTS’
“Each ⁠such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and de-escalate,” Sybiha said.
Ukrainian officials have met Russian officials under US mediation in Abu Dhabi in the latest US push to end the war.
But the talks so far have failed to resolve differences over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, sources say, and Russia has pressed on with attacks often focused on Ukrainian
energy facilities
in the depths of a harsh winter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said ​on Wednesday the US needed
to put ​more pressure on Russia
if it wanted the war to end by summer.