Thousands pray for MH370 at service in Kuala Lumpur
Print Edition
IN Kuala Lumpur yesterday, families of passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane attended a prayer service that also drew thousands of Malaysian sympathizers.
“This is not a prayer for the dead because we have not found bodies. This is a prayer for blessings and that the plane will be found,” said Liow Tiong Lai, president of the government coalition party that organized the two-hour session, during which orange-robed Buddhist monks chanted mantras.
Two Chinese women were in tears and hugged by their supporters as they left after the prayer. Many others looked somber, and several wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Pray for MH370.”
Two-thirds of the passengers on the flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board were Chinese, and a group of relatives has been in Kuala Lumpur to follow the investigation.
Some family members still cling to hope in the absence of wreckage from the plane, and are desperate for leads.
China’s search vessels have failed to find any confirmed clues to the fate of flight MH370, now missing for 30 days, an official said.
Chinese vessels had searched a total of 136,000 square kilometers by midday yesterday, said Zhuo Li, an official with the China Maritime Search and Rescue Center. The center had mobilized 62 merchant ships passing through the area for their help.
China has used 18 vessels, eight helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft in its search for the missing plane.
On Saturday, Malaysia said it had launched a formal investigation into the plane’s disappearance that would include experts from Australia, the United States, China, Britain and France.
Normally, a formal air safety investigation is not launched until wreckage is found. But there have been concerns that Malaysia’s informal investigations have lacked the legal standing of an official inquiry.
Under International Civil Aviation Organization rules, the country where the aircraft is registered leads the investigation when the incident takes place in international waters.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the investigation would comprise three groups: one would examine maintenance records, structures and systems; another would study flight recorders, operations and meteorology; while a “medical and human factors” group would look into psychology, pathology and survival.
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