Kin Of MH370 victims urge fresh search 10 years after mysterious disappearance

Families of passengers on a Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing almost ten years ago advocated for a fresh search on Sunday, sharing stories of their ongoing sorrow and difficulty in coming to terms with what happened.

On March 8, 2014, Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers, mysteriously vanished as it traveled from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The plane has never been located, despite the greatest search in aviation history.

At a “remembrance day” held on Sunday at a shopping center close to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, some 500 families and their supporters convened; many of them were obviously distraught.

Nearly two-thirds of the passengers on the fateful jet were from China, where some of them originated.

“The last 10 years have been a nonstop emotional rollercoaster for me,” Grace Nathan, a 36-year-old Malaysian lawyer whose mother, Anne Daisy, 56, was on the flight, told AFP.

Speaking to the crowd, she called on the Malaysian government to conduct a new search.

“MH370 is not history,” she said.

Liu Shuang Fong, 67, from China’s Hebei province lost her 28-year-old son Li Yan Lin, who was also a passenger on the plane.

“I demand justice for my son. Where is the plane?” said Liu, who flew to Malaysia for the event.

“The search must go on,” she added.

Very little evidence of the aircraft was recovered throughout the nearly three-year search, which covered 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) in the Indian Ocean. A few bits of debris were found.

In January 2017, the Australian-led operation came to an end.

In 2018, a US exploration company began a private search for MH370, however it was called off after several months of fruitless searching of the ocean floor.