Malaysia discounts possible missing plane sighting in Maldives

Investigators probing the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board have discounted reports the plane may have been sighted over the Maldives, Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
   
Several residents of Kudahuvadhoo, one of the more remote atolls in the Indian Ocean island chain nation, had reported seeing a low-flying aircraft on the morning of March 8, when Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
   
Hishammuddin told a daily news conference on Wednesday that the reports had been investigated by police in the Maldives and were determined to be untrue.

This comes after China has not yet found any sign a missing Malaysian Airlines jet entered in its territory, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Wednesday.
   
Hong made the comments at a daily news briefing.
   
Investigations into the mystery of the missing Malaysian aircraft appeared to be at a deadlock, with no conclusive evidence yet of foul play and doubts surfacing about whether nations would share military tracking data that could show where the plane may have headed.

Earlier, a source close to the investigation said investigators examining the March 8 disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane with 239 people aboard believe it most likely that the plane flew into the southern Indian Ocean.
   
"The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor," said the source, referring to a search area stretching from west of Indonesia to the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
 
 
REUTERS