Missing plane: Families of passengers asked to brace up for the worst

Kuala Lumpur, March 10: The mystery behind the missing

is getting deeper.

On Sunday afternoon, a rectangular object that was thought to be one of the doors of the Malaysian Airlines jet, was allegedly found by searchers in a low-flying plane. However, although Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night, they could not find the debris, said a AP report.

Doan Huu Gia, the chief of Vietnam's search and rescue coordination center, said on Monday that four planes and seven ships from Vietnam were searching for the object but nothing had been found.

Vietnam searchers on ship find no debris of the plane

The Boeing 777 went missing early on Saturday morning while it was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam and the plane disappeared from the radar when it was above Vietnam.

After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should "prepare themselves for the worst," Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline, told reporters.

It was also known that two passengers managed to board the ill-fated aircraft using stolen passports. Interpol confirmed it knew about the stolen passports but said no authorities checked its vast databases on stolen documents before the Boeing jetliner departed on Saturday.

On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens who boarded the flight matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States were deployed to the area where ground controllers lost contact with the plane on the maritime border between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, two-thirds were Chinese. Also, there were four Indians on board

Oneindia News