REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, KUALA LUMPUR - China demanded that Malaysia turn over the satellite data used to conclude that a Malaysia Airlines jetliner had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board, as gale-force winds and heavy rain on Tuesday halted the search for remains of the plane.
The weather is expected to improve so that the multinational search being conducted out of Perth, Australia, could possibly resume Wednesday. But the searchers will face a daunting task of combing a vast expanse of choppy seas for suspected remnants of the aircraft sighted earlier.
"We're not searching for a needle in a haystack — we're still trying to define where the haystack is," Australia's deputy defense chief, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, told reporters at a military base in Perth as idled planes stood behind him.
Australian and Chinese search planes spotted floating objects in an area 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth on Monday, but none was retrieved. Now, with the harsh weather and a 24-hour delay in the search, those objects and other possible debris from the plane could drift to an even wider area.
In remarks to the Malaysian Parliament, Prime Minister Najib Razak cautioned that the search will take a long time and "we will have to face unexpected and extraordinary challenges."
Late Monday, Najib announced that the Boeing 777 had gone down in the sea with no survivors. But that's all that investigators and the Malaysian government have been able to say with certainty about Flight 370's fate since it disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
Left unanswered are many troubling questions about why it was so far off course. Experts piecing together radar and satellite data believe the plane back-tracked over Malaysia and then traveled in the opposite direction to the Indian Ocean. Investigators will be looking at various possibilities including mechanical or electrical failure, hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.
"We do not know why. We do not know how. We do not know how the terrible tragedy happened," the airline's chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told reporters.
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