‘MH370’s location an inconceivable mystery’
Canberra: Australian investigators on Tuesday released their final report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying the inability to bring closure for victims families was a “great tragedy” and “almost inconceivable” in the modern age.
Authorities, in the final report which was published on Tuesday, added they deeply regret not finding the plane and the ongoing mystery is “unacceptable.”
“The reasons for the loss of MH370 cannot be established with certainty until the aircraft is found,” the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the agency that coordinated the largest and most expensive underwater search in history, said in the report.
“It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era...for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board.”
The disappearance of the Boeing 777 on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, on a flight to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
“I hope, however, that they can take some solace in the fact that we did all we could do to find answers,” the report adds.
The suspension followed an unsuccessful underwater search 2,800km off the coast of Western Australia, which used a deep-sea sonar search over 120,000 sq.km.
Following the underwater search, a re-analysis of satellite imagery had narrowed the plane’s likely resting place to an area of less than 25,000 sq.km, the ATSB said. The location of the Boeing 777 has become one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
In a breach of diplomatic propriety, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has branded Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “terrorist”, and said the Indian government was being run by “a terrorist party”.
Asif made the remarks in an appearance on Geo TV’s Capital Talk show, in response to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) speech last month, in which she had accused Pakistan of “producing and exporting terrorism”.
“Pakistan Foreign Minister is a political pygmy in a powerless government kowtowing to the terror organisations. These pusillanimous comments reflect Pakistan’s frustration with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful diplomacy in exposing the terror face of Pakistan to the world. That Pakistan is getting desperate is evident from these patently foolish and irresponsible comments,” BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao told PTI.
Asif made the remarks while talking about Kashmiris who have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir and civilian casualties in cross-border firing along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary, the Dawn reported.
“A terrorist is their (India’s) prime minister at this time. One whose hands are stained with the blood of the Muslims of Gujarat,” the report quoted him as saying. “A terrorist party is ruling them (India) - the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) is ruling them. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is like its subsidiary organisation,” he said.
“But Narendra Modi is an elected ‘terrorist’,” Hamid Mir, the show’s host, reminded Asif.
“The nation that elects a terrorist... what kind of nation is that?” the minister retorted.
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