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Malaysia: MH370 meet to decide future of search July 19

Ministerial-level meet with Australia, China to decide how to proceed with search for flight missing since March 2014

01.07.2016 - Update : 02.07.2016
Malaysia: MH370 meet to decide future of search July 19

Kuala Lumpur

By P Prem Kumar

KUALA LUMPUR 

Malaysia announced Friday that a ministerial meeting with China and Australia to determine how to proceed with the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will be held July 19 in capital Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said that the meeting with his counterparts will deliberate on the next series of action regarding the search for the aircraft that vanished from military radar March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board.

"We [Australia, China and Malaysia] will not call off for the search," he stressed in a statement, adding that of the dedicated 120,000 square kilometer (46,332 square mile) search grid, operations have to-date combed through 107,000 square kilometers.

Liow also said bad weather had hampered the search, which would resume in October when the situation improved.

Last month, “special officials” attended a two-day tripartite meeting hosted in Kuala Lumpur and decided to forward their recommendations to the ministerial-level gathering.

To-date, Malaysian and Australian authorities have confirmed that at least five pieces of debris found in Mozambique and South Africa and islands off eastern Africa.

The search and rescue mission, the most intensive in commercial aviation history, began immediately after the flight went missing and involved some 160 assets inclusive of 65 aircraft and 95 vessels as well as experts from 25 countries.

After 10 months of intensive undersea search for the vanished flight, on Jan. 29, 2015 Malaysia declared that MH370 was lost in an accident, killing all passengers.

Of those on board, 152 were citizens of China, 50 of Malaysia and six of Australia.

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