A relative of one of the Chinese passengers aboard the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 grieves after being told of the latest news in Beijing, China, Monday, March 24, 2014. It was the grim news that families of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight had dreaded for weeks, and on Monday they heard it from Malaysia’s prime minister: new analysis of satellite data indicates the missing plane crashed into a remote corner of the Indian Ocean. AP PHOTO/NG HAN GUAN
BEIJING—Relatives shrieked and sobbed uncontrollably. Men and women nearly collapsed, held up by loved ones. Their grief came pouring out after 17 days of waiting for definitive word on the fate of the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
Malaysia’s prime minister gave that word late Monday in a televised announcement from Kuala Lumpur, saying there was no longer any doubt that Flight 370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean.
Relatives of passengers in Beijing had been called to a hotel near the airport to hear the news, and some 50 of them gathered there. Afterward, they filed out of a conference room in heart-wrenching grief.
One woman collapsed and fell on her knees, crying “My son! My son!”
Medical teams arrived at the Lido hotel with several stretchers and one elderly man was carried out of the conference room on one of them, his face covered by a jacket. Minutes later, a middle-aged woman was taken out on another stretcher, her face ashen and her blank eyes seemingly staring off into a distance.
Most of them refused to speak to gathered reporters and some of them lashed out in anger, urging journalists not to film the scene. Security guards restrained a man with close-cropped hair as he kicked a TV cameraman and shouted, “Don’t film. I’ll beat you to death!”
Wang Zhen, whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Yunming, were aboard the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia, heard the announcement on television from another hotel where he had been staying.
He said some of the relatives had received a text message in English from the airliner advising of the findings to be announced in a late-night news conference by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Najib said an unprecedented analysis of satellite data concluded that the flight, which disappeared March 8 with 239 people aboard while on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, must have ended in the sea far from any possible landing site.
“My mind is a mess right now. Can we talk later?” he said in a telephone interview.
Nan Jinyan, whose brother-in-law Yan Ling, a medical company engineer, was aboard the flight on a business trip, said she was prepared for the worst when she heard the Malaysian prime minister would hold a news conference.
“This is a blow to us, and it is beyond description,” Nan said.
In Kuala Lumpur, screaming could be heard from inside the Hotel Bangi Putrajaya, where some of the families of passengers had been given rooms.
Selamat Omar, father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer aboard the flight, said in a telephone interview that Malaysia Airlines had not yet briefed the families on whether they will be taken to Australia. He said they expected more details Tuesday.
“We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate,” Selamat said.—Christopher Bodeen with Didi Tang, Ian Mader, Todd Pitman and Eileen Ng
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