Perth/Kuala Lumpur: A preliminary report on the mysterious disappearance of Flight MH370 will be released next week, even as angry kin of Chinese passengers onboard the crashed plane protested today outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing demanding transparency from authorities.
Faced with anger and frustration from distraught families of 227 passengers on the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight, Prime Minister Najib Razak promised the report - already submitted to the UN`s aviation body International Civil Aviation Organisation - will be released to the public soon.
"In the name of transparency, we will release the report next week," he told CNN in an interview aired late yesterday.
Najib`s assurance, however, did not stop dozens of relatives of the Chinese passengers - who comprised 153 of the 239 on board the ill-fated plane - to protest in front of the Malaysian embassy located opposite the Indian mission here.
China has shut down the diplomatic district housing both the Indian and American embassies following the protest.
Relatives of the Chinese passengers had a stormy meeting with Malaysia Airlines staff yesterday after which they tried to protest in front of the mission.
Police stepped up security since yesterday evening and sealed off the area today.
This is the second time since the Beijing-bound plane went missing on March 8, that the Chinese relatives demonstrated in front of the embassy demanding Malaysian officials come out with the truth about the missing plane.
Earlier, relatives had lashed out over Najib`s "abrupt" announcement that the plane "ended" in the southern Indian Ocean where nearly seven weeks of search on the surface and beneath the sea have yielded no results.
The protesters said that this time they were angry over the failure of Malaysian officials to be present at the briefing by the airline yesterday as promised before.
Forty-nine days after the plane vanished from radar screens, mystery continues to shroud the fate of Boeing 777-200 that veered off from its route carrying 239 people, including five Indians, after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
A robotic mini-submarine scouring the seabed for wreckage of the plane has failed to yield results after 12 missions and searching nearly 95 per cent of the focused underwater search area.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21, a US Navy probe equipped with side-scan sonar, is currently completing mission 13, Perth-based Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) leading the search said.
JACC also said that the Bluefin would widen its search.
"If no contacts of interest are made, Bluefin 21 will continue to examine the areas adjacent to the 10-kilometer radius," it said in a statement.
