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'Tell us the truth!': Fear and grief turn to anger and frustration as relatives demand answers over missing Malaysian airlines flight MH370

Video footage from an Australian news channel has emerged showing furious relatives launching bottles of water at government officials

Rob Williams
Wednesday 12 March 2014 13:58 GMT
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The bottle is thrown during the press conference
The bottle is thrown during the press conference

Fear, grief and confusion has turned to frustration and anger among the relatives of passengers still missing after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

Video footage from an Australian news channel has emerged showing furious relatives launching bottles of water at government officials and airline representatives at a meeting in Beijing.

At the meeting a number of angry people were filmed shouting 'tell us the truth' and demanding to be told what the Malaysian military knew about the missing plane.

They then launched water bottles at officials when they refused to discuss the search operation.

The frustration comes as officials in Malaysia admitted they have no idea where the Boeing 777 is and said they are now searching 27,000 square miles of ocean.

The fate of flight MH370 and its crew and passengers remains a mystery since its last communication with air traffic control in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, photographs have emerged of one of the pilots of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane along with a number of images of passengers, including that of Indonesian passenger Firman Siregar pictured on his graduation day.

Amid a massive search and rescue effort there appeared to be confusion today after Malaysia's air force chief Rodzali Daud denied saying that the flight was tracked by military radar to the Malacca Strait, far west of its planned route.

He said he "did not make any such statements", but the air force had "not ruled out the possibility of an air turn-back".

Today Malaysia's acting transport minister insisted, however, that there is "no confusion" in the search for the plane. Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities would do "whatever it takes" to track down Flight MH370.

The contradictory statements follow days of sightings of wreckage that turned out to be unconnected to the missing plane and a number of sightings claiming to have witnessed 'noise and lights' in the north-east of the country. There were also reports of villagers claiming they saw the plane flying low over the ocean.

The seemingly chaotic search operation also came under fire amid reports that the Malaysian government had invited a witch doctor to help hunt for the plane.

According to the South China Morning Post Ibrahim Mat Zin, a famous witch doctor, was quoted as saying: “I think the plane is still in the air or has crashed into the sea.” His statement was widely ridiculed on Chinese social media sites.

CBC News also reported today that a US company has put crowdsourcing to work in the search for the missing jet. Colorado-based DigitalGlobe In has asked web users to study satellite images of over 3,100 square kilometres of ocean for any sign of wreckage.

Their request came, however, before Malaysia's military indicated the flight might have gone way off course.

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