No Bangladeshi citizen was on board the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, which had reportedly crashed into the sea off the coast of Vietnam with 239 people, an official confirmed yesterday.
“Our High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur confirmed that there was no Bangladeshi national on board of the respective Malaysian Airlines flight to Beijing,’ Shameem Ahsan, the director general (external publicity wing) at the Foreign Ministry told the news agency.
The aircraft, according to international media, came down near Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island. A search was underway.
The Flight MH370 lost contact just two hours after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
The Malaysian Airlines plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said.
It said there were 153 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven each from Indonesia and Australia, five from India, four from the U.S. and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria, reports AP.
If confirmed, it would mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year.
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a press briefing that Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysian air traffic control at 2:40 am, about two hours after it had taken off from Kuala Lumpur.
The plane, which carried passengers mostly from China but also from other Asian countries, North America and Europe, was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 am today.
