Vietnam continues search for missing Malaysian plane

Vietnam carried on its intensive hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on Wednesday, with a senior military officer denying his country is suspending part of the mission.   [Special coverage]

Vietnam will not suspend its efforts to locate the Boeing 777 aircraft, Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said Wednesday at the National Committee for Search and Rescue in Hanoi.

Vietnamese ships and planes are going on with the search as planned, he added.

Meanwhile, a source at the aviation search and rescue command post under Vietnam's Air Traffic Coordination Center also told Xinhua that a number of searching planes have taken off from an airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

"Vietnam is devoted to finding out the whereabouts of the jet," said the official, who preferred not to be named.

Earlier in the day, Deputy Transport Minister Pham Quy Tieu, who is leading a frontline command post in Phu Quoc Island, said at a press conference that part of the search efforts are being suspended pending Malaysia's response to its enquiries.

He told reporters that the Vietnamese side has asked twice for Malaysian confirmation about the widely circulated reports that it has found signals of the ill-fated flight and located the rear part of the Boeing 777 aircraft, but the Malaysian side has so far failed to respond.

Commenting on the development, Tuan denied that Vietnam is suspending the search, and stressed that his country will expand the scope further to the east of the plane's air route and to inland areas.

The waters off Phu Quoc Island were one of the major searching areas thanks to its proximity to the last known location of Flight MH370, which suddenly vanished from radar early Saturday morning while carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But more than 100 hours of search has so far produced no solid clues.

According to Tuan, nine planes and eight ships from Vietnam are now engaged in the hunt for the missing jetliner alongside 22 aircraft and 14 vessels from other contributors in Vietnamese waters.