Malaysia agree to extend search for MH370 by two months

Malaysia has accepted the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's (ATSB) decision to continue the search for the missing flight MH370 for another two months.

Datuk Jailani Johari, who is the MH370 Search Mission Communications Committee chairman and Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister, said the extension was necessary since the weather conditions in the area is not favourable to conduct any search activities now.

"Since the weather conditions in the identified search areas are not favourable, we had to agree to an extension of two months," he told reporters after opening a 'Current Issue Forum: Threat by Daesh Militants' at Dewan Majlis Perbandaran Sungai Petani, here today.

Yesterday, foreign media had reported that the ATSB had decided to extend the search period for MH370 by another two months following the current bad weather conditions in the Indian Ocean.

Flight MH370 dropped off radar on March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. The Boeing 777 aircraft has yet to be found, even after an exhaustive search in the southern Indian Ocean where it is believed to have gone down after veering off course.

After a multinational search for the missing aircraft for more than a month in the southern Indian Ocean did not turn up anything, Malaysia, China and Australia agreed to continue the mission further south of the original search area.

Jailani said though the search had entered the third year, the government remains committed to continue the search and urged the next-of-kin of the MH370 victims to remain calm and have faith in the search team.

He said Malaysia were always in close contact with Australia and China to keep tab of the latest development.

In his speech earlier, Jailani said the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) had blocked 36 websites that promoted Daesh ideology in Malay, English and Indonesia.

He said 72 URL links and 12 social media accounts were removed for promoting Daesh related ideology.

"We are aware that the Daesh group are experts in using the new social media to propagate the Daesh ideology. They gain support and assistance or recruit new members by twisting facts from the al-Quran.

"It is therefore a major challenge for the authorities to control the activities of these extremist groups who use various applications on social media like You Tube, WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook," he said. -- Bernama