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MH370 kin want search to focus on Madagascar coast

MH370 Relatives of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 yesterday accused Malaysian authorities of neglecting the search for the missing plane.

During a visit to Madagascar, they urged investigators to focus on the coast of the island nation instead of the Indian Ocean off Australia.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

Seven members of an association representing the families have travelled to Madagascar to push for a more intensive search for its remains.

“We have asked them for about six months to mobilise a search, but we didn’t receive an answer, so unfortunately we don’t know the real reason why a search was not mobilised,” said Grace Subathirai Nathan from Malaysia, whose mother was on the plane.

“Official searches have focused in an area in the bottom of the Indian Ocean; the search is being carried out very deep in an area where the plane is unlikely to be located,” said Frenchman Ghislain Wattrelos, who lost his wife and two children in the crash.

“The more debris is found, the easier it will be to locate the crash area. If the crash area is found, the rest of the plane will be found,” he said, adding that would make it possible to determine the cause of the accident.

Madagascar civil aviation director James Andrianalisoa meanwhile said Malaysian investigators had arrived last week in the island state and discussed the search with local authorities.

An earlier statement by Voice 370, the MH370 family association, noted that the debris found so far had been collected by the public off the east coast of Africa, including Madagascar.

Australia has taken the lead in finding the missing plane, completing more than 90 percent of 120,000 square kilometres of underwater search, as well as conducting forensic investigations on the debris found.

“We have been waiting for more than 1,000 days and we still don’t know what happened to our loved ones. Every day is a nightmare for us,” Voice 370 said in a brochure urging Madagascar residents to participate in the search.

- dpa

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