Missing jet relatives dragged from news conference in Malaysia

Chinese relatives of the missing flight MH370 passengers were dragged away from journalists during a news conference in Malaysia as frustration with the plane search boiled over.

They were attempting to speak to Chinese journalists outside the daily press conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Teams from 26 countries are trying to find Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.

One of the relatives, a middle-aged woman, cried: “They give different messages every day! Where’s the flight now? Find our relatives! Find the aircraft!”

The Malaysian government said later it regretted the scenes and ordered an investigation, saying “one can only imagine the anguish they are going through”.

During the daily briefing, Malaysia’s acting transport minister rejected reports that emerged on Tuesday that the plane had been spotted in the Maldives.

A local councilor on the island of Kudahuvadhoo has said that about 10 people described seeing a large aeroplane some hours after it disappeared.

The acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, also said the authorities had investigated almost all the passengers and crew of the plane, but had so far found no information of significance.

“We have received passengers’ background checks from all countries apart from Ukraine and Russia,” he told reporters. There were two Ukrainians and one Russian on the plane.

Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu also said some data had been deleted from the flight simulator found at Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home on February 3, and that investigators were trying to recover the deleted files.

Hishammuddin Hussein stressed Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah should be considered innocent until proven guilty and that members of his family were co-operating with the investigation. Deleting files would not necessarily be suspicious, particularly if it were to free up memory space.

Chinese citizens made up the overwhelming majority of the passengers on the plane, which had been heading from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Responding to complaints among relatives of those on board that they are not being kept fully informed, the Malaysian authorities said they would send a team to Beijing to liaise with Chinese families waiting for news.