Two suspicious passengers on missing Malaysian Airlines jet ‘not Asian-looking’

Two suspicious passengers who used stolen passports to board the missing Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 239 people “were not Asian-looking men,” a senior Malaysian aviation official said on Monday.

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, rejected Home Minister Zahid Hamidi’s claim that the two suspicious passengers had “Asian facial features.”

“We have looked and re-looked at the footage of the video and the photographs; it is confirmed now that they are not Asian-looking men,” Rahman said.

Malaysia police Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said investigators have already identified one of the two suspicious passengers.

Blame game

Beijing on Monday blamed Kuala Lumpur for a lack of information about a vanished Malaysia Airlines flight, as tearful relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers aboard voiced frustration with all sides of the response effort.

Nearly two-thirds of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 were from China, and if the loss of the aircraft is confirmed, it would be China’s second-worst air disaster in history.

The Chinese government “urges the Malaysian side to step up their efforts to speed up the investigation and provide accurate information to China in a timely fashion,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

“They should also properly manage work related to family members of passengers and follow-up issues,” he added.

Qin noted that “the incident is still under investigation”, but China’s state-run media minced no words, lashing out at Malaysia and its national carrier over their handling of the missing jet, demanding answers despite the early stage of the investigation and calling for a swifter effort.

For its part, MAS said in a statement that it is deploying an additional aircraft on Tuesday “to bring the families from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur”.