Malaysia’s air force chief said Wednesday that military radar had tracked an unidentified object over the Strait of Malacca early Saturday morning, and investigators were trying to determine whether it was the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Chief Gen. Rodzali Daud said the object was detected by a military radar facility and flying westward, subsequent to the last known civilian contact with Flight 370. “We did not scramble fighters because we knew it came from civilian airspace,” he said. “There is a lot of traffic there and the radar controllers knew it was coming from civilian airspace. I’m not saying it’s MH370, we’re still corroborating” with civilians and experts to identify the aircraft.
The investigation for the missing airliner with 239 people on board has been dogged by false leads and conflicting reports, ranging from sightings of suspected debris from the plane to confusion over where Flight 370 was last located before vanishing en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur over the South China Sea. The confusion in the investigation is creating friction between Malaysia and other nations. More than a dozen Chinese diplomats met with Malaysian authorities in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday as tension grew between the two countries over the as-yet fruitless search for the jet. The day before, Beijing pointedly pressed Malaysia to accelerate its probe. “We want Malaysia to work harder and speed up efforts on behalf of the families,” said Qin Gang, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry.
