Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang urged Malaysia to provide more information about missing flight MH370, amid relatives’ anger at the authorities in Kuala Lumpur, news reports said on Wednesday.
Li urged Malaysia to provide detailed and accurate information” on the Malaysia Airlines flight, which data analysis indicated crashed into the southern Indian Ocean on March 8, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines have been widely criticised in China, in particular by relatives of the 154 Chinese passengers on board the Boeing 777-200.
Angry family members held a protest in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing on Tuesday.
Li said at a State Council meeting on Tuesday that the families of the passengers were going through “heart-wrenching grief,” Xinhua reported, and that the rights and interests of Chinese nationals would be safeguarded.
He said search and rescue was still the top priority, comments echoed on Wednesday by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
“We’re just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle,” Abbott said.
“It’s not absolutely open-ended, but it’s not something we will lightly abandon.” He was speaking as better weather allowed the effort to ramp up again with ships and planes from six nations in the hunt.
Nothing has been recovered from the search area 2,500 km south-west of Perth despite several sightings of unidentified flotsam.
Twelve aircraft were in Perth ready to fly to the 80,000-square-km search site, an Austria-sized area half-way to Antarctica.
Abbott said the relatives of the Chinese passengers were welcome to come to Australia to be nearer the search. He said visa fees would be waived.