World

KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam — Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday, as Vietnam reported a possible sighting of wreckage from the plane.

International police agency Interpol confirmed that at least two passports recorded in its database as lost or stolen were used by passengers on the flight, raising suspicions of foul play.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more “suspect passports” that were being further investigated. She was unable to say how many, or from which country or countries.

Nearly 48 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, mystery still surrounded its fate. Malaysia’s air force chief said the Beijing-bound airliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before it vanished from radar screens.

“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” a source involved in the investigations in Malaysia told Reuters.

If the plane had plunged intact from close to its cruising altitude, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.

Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft’s flight path, but have found no confirmed trace of the lost plane, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

Late on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website that a Vietnamese navy plane had spotted an object in the sea suspected of being part of the plane, but that it was too dark to be certain. Search planes were set to return to investigate the suspected debris at daybreak.

Widening search

“The outcome so far is there is no sign of the aircraft,” Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said.

“On the possibility of hijack, we are not ruling out any possibility,” he told reporters.

The Malaysian authorities said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who were using false identity documents.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans — Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi — who, according to their foreign ministries, were not on the plane. Both had apparently had their passports stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

The BBC reported that the men falsely using their passports had purchased tickets together and were due to fly on to Europe from Beijing, meaning they did not have to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks.

An employee at a travel agency in Pattaya, in Thailand, told Reuters the two had purchased the tickets there.

Interpol maintains a vast database of more than 40 million lost and stolen travel documents and has long urged member countries to make greater use of it to stop people crossing borders on false papers.

The global police organisation confirmed that Kozel’s and Maraldi’s passports had both been added to the database after their theft in 2012 and 2013 respectively. But it said no country had consulted the database to check either of them since the time they were stolen.

“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said in a statement.

In a sign that Malaysia’s airport controls may have been breached, Prime Minister Najib Razak said security procedures were being reviewed.

Four suspects

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers. He said help was also being sought from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.

“We are looking at all possibilities,” he said. “We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane.”

The 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40am on Saturday(1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.

It last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft (10,670 metres) and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records.

There were no reports of bad weather.

“What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback,” Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.

The search was being extended to the west coast of the Malay peninsula, in addition to a broad expanse of the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, he said.

Vietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday.

Besides the Vietnamese vessels, Malaysia and neighbouring countries have deployed 34 aircraft and 40 ships in the search. China and the United States have sent ships to help and Washington has also deployed a maritime surveillance plane.

US officials from Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to Asia to help in investigations, NTSB said in a statement. Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

The airline has said 14 nationalities were among the passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

KIEV/SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — Warning shots were fired to prevent an unarmed international military observer mission from entering Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea on Saturday, as new confrontations between Russian and Ukrainian troops raised tension ever higher.

Russia’s seizure of the Black Sea peninsula, which began about 10 days ago, has so far been bloodless, but its forces have become increasingly aggressive towards Ukrainian troops, who are trapped in bases and have offered no resistance.

Tempers have grown hotter in the last two days, since the region’s pro-Moscow leadership declared it part of Russia and announced a March 16 referendum to confirm it.

A spokeswoman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said no one was hurt when shots were fired to turn back its mission of more than 40 unarmed observers, who have been invited by Kiev but do not have permission from Crimea’s pro-Russian separatist regional authorities.

They had been turned back twice before, but this was the first time shots were fired.

Kiev’s security council said it had been targeted by hackers in a “massive” denial of service attack designed to cripple its computers. The national news agency was also hit, it said.

President Vladimir Putin declared a week ago that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens, and his parliament has voted to change the law to make it easier to annex territory.

The pro-Moscow authorities have ordered all remaining Ukrainian troop detachments in Crimea to disarm and surrender, but at several locations they have refused to yield.

Overnight, Russian troops drove a truck into a missile defence post in Sevastopol, the home of both their Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian navy, and took control of it. A Reuters reporting team at the scene said no one was hurt.

Ukraine’s border service said Russian troops had also seized a border guard outpost in the east of the peninsula overnight, kicking the Ukrainian officers and their families out of their apartments in the middle of the night.

“The situation is changed. Tensions are much higher now. You have to go. You can’t film here,” said a Russian soldier carrying a heavy machinegun, his face covered except for his eyes, at a Ukrainian navy base in Novozernoye.

About 100 armed Russians are keeping watch over the Ukrainians at the base, where a Russian ship has been scuttled at the entrance to keep the Ukrainians from sailing out.

“Things are difficult and the atmosphere has got worse. The Russians threaten us when we go and get food supplies and point their guns at us,” said Vadim Filipenko, the Ukrainian deputy commander at the base.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Saturday Poland had evacuated its consulate in Sevastopol due to “continuing disturbances by Russian forces”.

Many hotheads

Moscow denies that the Russian-speaking troops in Crimea are under its command, an assertion Washington dismisses as “Putin’s fiction”. Although they wear no insignia, the troops drive vehicles with Russian military plates and identify themselves as Russian troops to the besieged Ukrainian forces.

A Reuters reporting team saw a convoy of hundreds of Russian troops in about 50 troop trucks, accompanied by armoured vehicles and ambulances, pull into a military base near Simferopol on Saturday.

The United States has announced sanctions against individuals it blames for interfering with Ukrainian territorial integrity, although it has yet to publish the list.

The European Union is also considering sanctions, but this may be much harder to organise for a 28-member bloc that must take decisions unanimously and depends on Russian natural gas.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave no indication of any softening of Moscow’s position on Saturday, insisting that the government in Kiev had been installed in an illegal coup.

Pro-Moscow Crimea leader Sergei Aksyonov said the referendum on union with Russia — due in a week — would not be stopped. It had been called so quickly to avert “provocation”, he said.

“There are many hotheads who are trying to create a destabilised situation in the autonomous republic of Crimea, and because the life and safety of our citizens is the most valuable thing, we have decided to curtail the duration of the referendum and hold it as soon as possible,” he told Russian television.

Aksyonov, whose openly separatist Russian Unity party received just 4 per cent of the vote in Crimea’s last parliamentary election, declared himself provincial leader 10 days ago after armed Russians seized the parliament building.

Crimean opposition parliamentarians say most lawmakers were barred from the besieged building, both for the vote that installed Aksyonov and the one a week later that declared Crimea part of Russia, and the results were falsified. Both votes took place behind closed doors.

Crimea has a narrow ethnic Russian majority, but it is far from clear that most residents want to be ruled from Moscow. When last asked in 1991, they voted narrowly for independence along with the rest of Ukraine. Western countries dismiss the upcoming referendum as illegal and likely to be falsified.

Many in the region do feel deep hostility to Kiev, and since Aksyonov took power supporters of union with Moscow have controlled the streets, waving Russian flags and chanting “Rossiya! Rossiya!”

Nevertheless, many still quietly speak of their alarm at the Russian takeover: “With all these soldiers here, it is like we are living in a zoo,” said Tatyana, 41, an ethnic Russian. “Everyone fully understands this is an occupation.”

The region’s two million population includes more than 250,000 indigenous Tatars, who have returned only since the 1980s after being deported en masse to distant Uzbekistan by Stalin. They are fiercely opposed to Russian annexation.

The referendum is “completely illegitimate. It has no legal basis”, Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarev told Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “Different groups of people with different histories live here. A mathematical majority cannot express the wishes of the population.”

Journalists have been attacked by hostile crowds. The Associated Press said armed men had confiscated TV equipment from one of its crews.

In addition to the Russian troops, the province is prowled by roving bands of “self-defence” forces and Cossacks in fur hats armed with whips, who were bused in from southern Russia.

Russian television and the provincial channel controlled by Aksyonov broadcast relentless accounts of “fascists” in control of the streets in Kiev and of plans by Ukraine to ban the Russian language. Ukrainian television and the region’s only independent station have been switched off.

Gazprom arrears

Putin launched the operation to seize Crimea within days of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich’s flight from the country. Yanukovich was toppled after three months of demonstrations against a decision to spurn a free trade deal with the European Union for closer ties with Russia.

The final week of protests saw around 100 people killed in the streets, many shot by sharpshooters on rooftops.

Ukraine is near bankruptcy, and the West has had to step in to replace $15 billion in loans that Putin had promised to Yanukovich. The European Commission has said it could give Ukraine up to 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in the next couple of years provided it reaches agreement with the IMF, which requires economic reforms that Yanukovich had resisted.

Promises of billions of dollars in Western aid for Kiev, and the perception that Putin has held back from ordering troops beyond Crimea into other parts of Ukraine, have helped reverse a rout of the local hryvnia currency.

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said Ukraine had not paid its $440 million gas bill for February, bringing its arrears to $1.89 billion, and hinted it could turn off the taps.

In Moscow, a huge crowd gathered near the Kremlin on Friday at a government-sanctioned rally and concert billed as being “in support of the Crimean people”. Pop stars took to the stage and demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Crimea is Russian land” and “We believe in Putin”.

KUALA LUMPUR/HO CHI MINH CITY — A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday and European officials said two people on board were using false identities.

There were no reports of bad weather and no sign why the Boeing 777-200ER would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

“We are not ruling out any possibilities,” Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference.

By the early hours of Sunday, there were no confirmed signs of the plane or any wreckage, more than 24 hours after it went missing. Operations will continue through the night, officials said.

There were no indications of sabotage nor claims of a terrorist attack. But the passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans — Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi — who, according to their foreign ministries, were not in fact on the plane.

A foreign ministry spokesman in Vienna said: “Our embassy got the information that there was an Austrian on board. That was the passenger list from Malaysia Airlines. Our system came back with a note that this is a stolen passport.”

Austrian police had found the man safe at home. The passport was stolen two years ago while he was travelling in Thailand, the spokesman said.

The foreign ministry in Rome said no Italian was on the plane either, despite the inclusion of Maraldi’s name on the list. His mother, Renata Lucchi, told Reuters his passport was lost, presumed stolen, in Thailand in 2013.

The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40am (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and was apparently flying in good weather conditions when it went missing without a distress call.

A crash, if confirmed, would likely mark the US-built airliner’s deadliest incident since entering service 19 years ago. It would also be the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year.

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.

Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having apparently reached its initial cruise altitude of 35,000 feet.

“Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with whatever has taken place,” he told Reuters.

He said it was too early to speculate on the causes.

A large number of planes and ships from several countries were scouring the area where the plane last made contact, about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam.

“The search and rescue operations will continue as long as necessary,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters. He said his country had deployed 15 air force aircraft, six navy ships and three coast guard vessels.

Search and rescue vessels from the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency reached the area where the plane last made contact but saw no sign of wreckage, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said.

Vietnam said its rescue planes had spotted two large oil slicks, about 15 km long, and a column of smoke off its coastline, but it was not clear if they were connected to the missing plane.

China and the Philippines also sent ships to the region to help, while the United States, the Philippines and Singapore dispatched military planes. China has also put other ships and aircraft on standby, said Transport Minister Yang Chuantang.

Nos distress call

The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours and wreckage was found only two days later.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, CEO Yahya said.

Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 feet and was still climbing when it vanished from the site’s tracking records a minute later.

John Goglia, a former board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, the US agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device.

“It had to be quick because there was no communication,” Goglia said.

He said the false identities of the two passengers strongly suggested the possibility of a bomb.

“That’s a big red flag,” he said.

If there were passengers on board with stolen passports, it was not clear how they passed through security checks.

International police body Interpol maintains a database of more than 39 million travel documents reported lost or stolen by 166 countries and says on its website that this enables police, immigration or border control officers to check the validity of a suspect document within seconds. No comment was immediately available from the organisation.

Relatives angry

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing that China was “extremely worried” about the fate of the plane and those on board.

The airline said people of 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

Chinese relatives of passengers angrily accused the airline of keeping them in the dark, while state media criticised the carrier’s response as poor.

“There’s no one from the company here, we can’t find a single person. They’ve just shut us in this room and told us to wait,” said one middle-aged man at a hotel near Beijing airport where the relatives were taken.

“We want someone to show their face. They haven’t even given us the passenger list,” he said.

Another relative, trying to evade a throng of reporters, muttered: “They’re treating us worse than dogs.”

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Airlines told passengers’ next of kin to come to the international airport with their passports to prepare to fly to the crash site, once it was identified.

About 20-30 families were being kept in a holding room at the airport, where they were being guarded by security officials and kept away from reporters.

Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records among full-service carriers in the Asia-Pacific region.

It identified the pilot of MH370 as Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian who joined the carrier in 1981 and has 18,365 hours of flight experience.

ISTANBUL — Former army chief Ilker Basbug was released from a life sentence following a court decision on Friday, adding to uncertainty over the fate of court cases trying coup plots against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The decision to release the former general came after Thursday’s constitutional court ruling that Basbug’s incarceration for his alleged role in the “Ergenekon” conspiracy to overthrow the government violated his rights, as the court trying him had failed to publish a detailed verdict on the case.

Basbug was released from Silivri prison near Istanbul where he had been held for 26 months in connection with the Ergenekon case, a trial which helped tame Turkey’s once all-powerful military.

Speaking in Silivri outside Istanbul in front of scores of supporters waving red Turkish flags, cheering and chanting, an emotional Basbug recalled his anger and shock that the head of the Turkish armed forces was being remanded in custody as the leader of a terrorist group.

“Those who acted with hatred and revenge kept us here for 26 months. They stole 26 months from my life,” he said.

Basbug’s release could be a precedent for more than 200 other defendants jailed over the Ergenekon affair.

“This verdict is very important, but unfortunately we were only now able to correct the injustice... after more than two years’ imprisonment,” Basbug’s lawyer Ilkay Sezer told reporters outside the Istanbul court house.

“There are many more people in jails who are suffering severe health problems and who have been victims of these courts. I hope that, as soon as possible, their cases will also be resolved with release orders.”

The five-year trial, which reached a verdict last August, was key to a decade-long battle between Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party and a secularist elite that had led modern Turkey from its foundation in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan is now engaged in a power struggle with a former ally, US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of using influence in the judiciary and police to orchestrate a corruption investigation targeting the government. Gulen denies this.

ANKARA — Turkey’s embattled prime minister has warned that his government could ban popular social media networks YouTube and Facebook after a number of online leaks added momentum to a spiralling corruption scandal.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proposals to tighten his government’s grip over the Internet have generated criticism at home and abroad about rights in the EU-hopeful country.

“There are new steps we will take in that sphere after March 30... including a ban [on YouTube, Facebook],” Erdogan told private ATV television in an interview late Thursday.

In stark contrast, President Abdullah Gul, a frequent social media user, said YouTube and Facebook cannot be unplugged.

“YouTube and Facebook are recognised platforms all over the world. A ban is out of the question,” he told reporters on Friday.

The president in Turkey is however a largely ceremonial figure.

Erdogan, Turkey’s all-powerful leader since 2003, has been under mounting pressure after audio recordings were leaked last month in which he and his son allegedly discuss how to hide vast sums of money.

The Turkish premier dismissed them as a “vile” and an “immoral” montage by rivals ahead of key local elections on March 30. His office claimed the recordings were “completely untrue”.

Media boss in tears

Erdogan’s government has been shaken by a high-level corruption scandal that erupted in mid-December and ensnared the premier’s key political and business allies.

Erdogan has waged a war against ally-turned-opponent Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric based in the United States with strong influence over the country’s police and the judiciary, of orchestrating the graft probe.

He has accused so-called “Gulenists” of acting like a “parallel state” and vowed to cleanse the state of the movement’s supporters by purging police and passing laws to increase his grip over the Internet and the judiciary.

“Social media has turned into a domain for quite some time where the battle between the loyalists of the frustrated prime minister and the alleged ‘parallel state’ is in full swing,” Asli Tunc, professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told AFP.

“The government is seeking to find channels to shut down the social media which leaks tapes or dissident views. People cling to social media tools like Twitter for their news because the mainstream media or TVs are cowering in fear,” she said.

A series of other leaks on YouTube showed Erdogan allegedly meddling in business deals, court cases and even media coverage.

In the latest audio tape posted on YouTube on Thursday, a voice purportedly of Erdogan is heard reprimanding businessman Erdogan Demiroren after his Milliyet newspaper published a 2013 article on the fragile peace talks with Kurdish rebels.

‘Did we upset you?’ asks Demiroren.

The voice allegedly of Erdogan calls both the reporter and the editor who published the story “dishonourable”, with the businessman promising that he would find the source and disclose it to the premier.

Demiroren is later heard bursting into tears under pressure to fire his two journalists, crying, “How did I end up in this business?”

Erdogan’s latest threat about Facebook and YouTube is a reflection of his political frustration in the run up to elections, according to Tunc, but she said the premier was also known for his intolerance toward the social media.

Erdogan is openly suspicious of the Internet, branding Twitter a “menace” last year for helping organise mass anti-government protests in which eight people died and thousands were injured.

“I don’t have that much time to waste in Twitter,” he said last month.

Access to thousands of websites have been blocked in recent years in Turkey.

YouTube was previously banned for two years until 2010 because of material deemed insulting to the country’s still-revered founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Further Internet curbs allowed the authorities to keep a record of someone’s web activity for up to two years and block sites deemed insulting or as invading privacy.

Critics say however that the latest curbs are aimed at preventing further details from the corruption scandal being leaked online.

The European Union has voiced its “concerns” that the Internet law would limit freedom of expression, urging Ankara to ensure compliance with the bloc’s standards.

KUALA LUMPUR/HANOI –– A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing over the South China Sea on Saturday, presumed crashed, as ships and planes from countries closest to its flight path scoured a large search area for any wreckage.

Vietnamese state media, quoting a senior naval official, had reported that the Boeing 777-200ER flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had crashed off south Vietnam. Malaysia's transport minister later denied any crash scene had been identified.

"We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed," Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

"We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side," he said.

Vietnamese Admiral Ngo Van Phat later qualified his earlier remarks about a crash site having been identified and told Reuters he was referring to a presumed location beneath the plane's flight path, using information supplied by Malaysia.

A crash, if confirmed, would likely mark the U.S.-built Boeing 777-200ER airliner's deadliest incident since entering service 19 years ago.

The plane disappeared without giving a distress signal - a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours before wreckage was found.

Search and rescue vessels from the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency reached the area where the plane last made contact at about 4.30 p.m. Singapore time (0830 GMT) but saw no immediate sign of wreckage, a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency told Reuters.

VANISHED AFTER REACHING 35,000 FEET

Flight MH370, operating a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said in a statement read to an earlier news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

There were no reports of bad weather in the area.

The airline said people from 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers - at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans. A Chinese infant and an American infant were also on board.

"The Australian government fears the worst for those aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370," a spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed the plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to an altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from the website's tracking records a minute later while it was still climbing.

Malaysia and Vietnam were conducting a joint search and rescue operation, while China and the Philippines have sent ships to the South China Sea to help. The Philippines also dispatched a military plane to help in the search.

China has also put other ships and aircraft on standby, said Transport Minister Yang Chuantang.

"EXTREMELY WORRIED"

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing before the initial Vietnamese report that the plane had crashed that China was "extremely worried" about the fate of the plane and those on board. "The news is very disturbing. We hope everyone on the plane is safe," Wang said.

The flight was operating as a China Southern Airlines

codeshare.

The flight left Kuala Lumpur at 12.21 a.m. (1621 GMT Friday) but no trace had been found of the plane more than eight hours after it was due to land in the Chinese capital at 6.30 a.m. (2230 GMT Friday) the same day.

"We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts with flight MH370," Jauhari said.

Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records among full-service carriers in the Asia-Pacific region.

It identified the pilot of MH370 as Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian who joined the carrier in 1981 and has 18,365 hours of flight experience.

Chinese state media said 24 Chinese artists and family members, who were in Kuala Lumpur for an art exchange programme, were aboard. The Sichuan provincial government said Zhang Jinquan, a well-known calligrapher, was on the flight.

If it is confirmed that the plane crashed, the loss would mark the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year and by far the worst since the jet entered service in 1995.

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.

Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment. The flight was operating as a China Southern Airlines codeshare.

An official at the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said the plane had failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while it was flying over the sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh city.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama declared on Thursday that a referendum in 10 days on the future of a Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula would violate international law. The United States also moved to impose visa restrictions and financial sanctions on Russians and Ukrainians for the moves Moscow already has made into Crimea.

Speaking from the White House, Obama said any decision on the future of Crimea, a pro-Russian area of Ukraine, must include the country’s new government.

“The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the constitution and violate international law,” Obama said. “We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.”

Obama spoke hours after a March 16 date was set for a referendum on whether the region should become part of Russia.

Russian forces began moving into Crimea about a week ago, despite Obama’s warnings that there would be costs for such actions. Seeking to follow through on that threat, Obama moved Thursday to enact new visa restrictions on an unspecified and unidentified number of people and entities that the US accused of threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial borders. The restrictions were unlikely to directly target Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Obama also signed an executive order that will allow the US to levy financial sanctions. In a statement, the White House said the penalties would target “those who are most directly involved in destabilising Ukraine, including the military intervention in Crimea, and does not preclude further steps should the situation deteriorate”.

In Brussels, meanwhile, the European Union announced it was suspending talks with Russia on an economic pact and on a visa deal in response to the Russian intervention in Crimea. EU leaders, like Obama, threatened further sanctions if Russia pushes ahead.

“I am confident that we are moving forward together, united in our determination to oppose actions that violate international law and to support the government and people of Ukraine,” Obama said.

Senior Obama administration officials said penalties will deepen significantly if Russia presses into areas of eastern Ukraine, though they said there is currently no indication Moscow has taken that step. The officials also indicated that the penalties could be ratcheted down if Russia pulls back its troops in Crimea and recognises Ukraine’s new government.

“We call on Russia to take the opportunity before it to resolve this crisis through direct and immediate dialogue with the government of Ukraine,” the White House statement read.

Ukraine’s unrest peaked in February, after months of pro-Western protests seeking the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in anger over economic woes and corruption. Yanukovych, who is pro-Russian, fled for protection to a location just outside of Moscow, and Putin sent troops into Crimea in a show of force against the upstart government in Kiev.

Crimea is a peninsula that hosts a major Russian navy base and is historically and culturally a Russian stronghold.

The visa bans will be imposed immediately and come in addition to an earlier State Department decision to deny US entry to those involved in human rights abuses related to political oppression in Ukraine. Officials would not say whether Yanukovych was a target of the visa ban or the sanctions.

The sanctions plan, outlined in an executive order, lays the legal groundwork for the Treasury Department to impose financial penalties on offenders. The aim is clearly to punish the separatist movement in Crimea as well as Russia for its decision to send military forces there.

Specifically, the sanctions would target people who undermine Ukraine’s democracy and new government; threaten the country’s peace, security, stability and sovereignty; are linked to misappropriations of government assets; and try to assert governmental authority over any part of Ukraine without the consent of Kiev. They would also prohibit US persons from doing business with those who have been sanctioned.

Congress has been rushing to impose hard-hitting sanctions on Russia in response to its takeover of Crimea, hoping Europe will follow the lead of the United States in upping the pressure on Putin’s government.

The US sanctions push represents a rare case of broad agreement among the Obama administration and Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress. But they all are also united in their concern that American economic penalties will mean little without the participation of European countries with far deeper commercial relations with Russia.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, welcomed the sanctions and said the Ohio Republican is “committed to working with the administration to give President Obama as many tools as needed to put President Putin in check as well as prevent Russia from infringing on the sovereignty of any of its other neighbours”.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, called the new penalties “a positive first step” that needs to be coupled with similar sanctions from Europe to underscore the costs — diplomatic and economic — of rejecting Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“I hope that Russia can be dissuaded from further aggression and can be walked back from its perilous course,” Schiff said. “But if not, the US and its allies must be prepared to use all of the diplomatic and economic tools at its disposal to deter such reckless conduct.”

KABUL — An early morning NATO air strike in Afghanistan’s eastern Logar province killed five Afghan soldiers on Thursday, defence ministry officials said. The coalition said the deaths were an accident and expressed its condolences.

NATO said the Afghan soldiers were “accidentally killed”, without specifying whether it was the result of an air strike.

Unusually reticent, Afghan President Hamid Karzai did not immediately condemn the international troops, telling reporters during a state visit to Sri Lanka that the incident is being investigated.

“This attack, NATO has admitted to me they did it mistakenly. We will investigate the issue and then speak about it,” Karzai said. He added that he would speak much differently, presumably in harsher tones, if he was addressing reporters in his own country.

Afghan defence ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said the strike occurred in the province’s Chakh district, and that eight Afghan National Army (ANA) troops were also wounded in the incident. The ministry’s helicopters ferried the wounded to Kabul, he told The Associated Press.

Azimi said an investigation was under way and that authorities “were saddened by the incident.”

A spokeswoman for the international forces in Afghanistan, Maj. Cathleen Snow, described the killings as an “unfortunate incident” during an operation in the country’s east. She said an investigation was being conducted to determine the circumstances that led to the deaths.

Snow did not specify whether an air strike was involved and did not elaborate on the operation.

“We can confirm that at least five Afghan National Army personnel were accidentally killed this morning,” Snow wrote in an e-mail to the AP. “Our condolences go out to the families of the ANA soldiers who lost their lives and were wounded.”

Earlier, a provincial government official said that 17 soldiers were wounded in the air strike but the discrepancy in the number of wounded could not immediately be reconciled. The Logar official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.

Later in Logar, provincial officials were meetings to decide their response and to conduct a further investigation.

Neither NATO nor Kabul officials would say whether Afghan troops had called in the air strike, as they often do in battle when air power is needed.

Karzai has been deeply critical of civilian deaths by international forces and his relationship with Washington has been on a downward spiral for several years. But in the last year, Karzai’s language has become much harsher. He has accused the international troops of being occupiers, colluding with the Taliban insurgents and carelessly killing Afghan civilians.

The testy relationship has kept Karzai from signing a security agreement with the United States that would allow for a residual force of US and NATO troops to stay behind in Afghanistan after the end of December, when all international forces are to leave the country in an ending to the 13 years of war.

Karzai has cited civilian casualties as one of his reasons for refusing to sign the deal. He has sought guarantees from the United States to protect Afghan citizens.

“We value the strong relationship with our Afghan partners, and we will determine what actions will be taken to ensure incidents like this do not happen again,” said the NATO spokeswoman, Snow.

Previously, Karzai had ordered an end to all coalition air strikes unless they were first cleared by the defence ministry.

The president’s decree banned air strikes in residential areas, Azimi said, at the same time stressing that the Afghan army needs NATO’s air power.

“For air support, we always need the support of NATO forces,” said Azimi. “The worries of the president, ministry of defence and the Afghan people are (about) civilian casualties in an air strike. Therefore, the president issued a decree not to have any air strikes in residential areas.”

Azimi refused to say whether NATO had first contacted the ministry before carrying out Thursday’s air strike, in keeping with Karzai’s demands.

CARACAS — Venezuela marked the first anniversary of Hugo Chavez’s death Wednesday with a blend of solemn ceremonies, clashes and a break in relations with Panama over protests dogging his successor’s presidency.

President Nicolas Maduro led a military parade with tanks, fighter jets and elite troops before a ceremony next to his mentor’s marble tomb in the former barracks that sit atop a Caracas slum.

Soldiers fired a cannon salvo at the hour of Chavez’s death, 4:25pm, from the Mountain Barracks that have become a pilgrimage site for his fervent leftist supporters.

But the commemorations were marred by new clashes in the capital’s eastern middle-class district into the late evening, hours after hundreds of anti-government students marched in the latest show of discontent in a month of demonstrations.

Some 200 national guard troops, backed by six armored trucks that fired tear gas, advanced on dozens of hardline protesters who lobbed firebombs after blocking streets with concrete blocks and burning trash.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests.

At least 18 people have died since early February during anti-government protests that Maduro has denounced as a US-backed plot by “fascists” to overthrow him.

The protests have posed the biggest challenge yet to Maduro’s young presidency, though analysts say his government remains sturdy enough to withstand the pressure.

 Break with Panama 

Standing next to the Chavez tomb, Maduro railed against the Washington-based Organisation of American States (OAS) and declared that he was breaking relations with Panama over its request for an OAS meeting about Venezuela’s unrest on Thursday.

“Nobody will conspire with impunity to ask for an intervention against our fatherland. Enough!” Maduro thundered as leftist presidents Raul Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Evo Morales of Bolivia looked on.

He called Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli a “lackey” of the United States.

Maduro also announced an unspecified number of arrests of people he accused of trying to commit sabotage on bridges and highways.

Outside, residents of the January 23 slum flew kites, launched fireworks and fired gunshots in the air to commemorate the former lieutenant colonel they call their “eternal commander”.

The west side’s celebration of Chavez contrasted with the anger felt in the wealthier east side of Caracas, where students and the opposition have held protests almost daily over the country’s runaway crime, food shortages and soaring inflation.

“The protests are a whim by the opposition to make the government fall, but they won’t succeed,” declared Dubraska Graterol, a 24-year-old government worker at the military parade.

Power of Chavez’s legacy 

After 14 years in power, Chavez lost his battle with cancer on March 5, 2013, leaving behind a country sharply divided by his oil-funded socialist revolution. He was 58.

His image figures prominently on billboards and walls throughout Caracas, while his speeches can be heard on national TV or speakers blasting from the January 23 slum.

Chavez retains a cult-like following among his supporters. Maduro himself refers to his mentor’s “physical departure”, suggesting that his spirit lives on.

While the protests have concentrated on the capital’s east side, the western slums remain government bastions. Some “Chavistas” say Maduro’s fate is linked to the revolution that Chavez started.

“As long as he fulfills the legacy that he [Chavez] left behind, I say that people will be satisfied and happy. If he doesn’t keep it up, he won’t go very far,” said Angela Sandoval, a 35-year-old resident of the January 23 slum.

Chavez’s handpicked successor was elected by a razor-thin margin in April last year, defeating opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who cried foul and refused to recognise the results.

Though the government is not as strong as a year ago, “there is no counter-power that can be considered enough to transition to another regime”, Central University of Venezuela professor Carlos Romero told AFP.

The protests erupted on February 4 in the western city of San Cristobal, where students demonstrated against the nation’s crime epidemic following the attempted rape of a young woman.

“We are protesting because one year after Chavez’s death, we have a president with many failings,” said Jesus Vielma, a 21-year-old engineering student.

ANKARA — Turkey’s constitutional court backed former army chief Ilker Basbug’s bid for release from a life jail sentence on Thursday, increasing disarray in the trial of coup plots against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is now battling a new foe.

The ruling paves the way for his possible release by a lower court and could be a precedent for more than 200 other defendants jailed for their alleged roles in the “Ergenekon” conspiracy against Erdogan’s government.

Basbug has been held in Silivri prison near Istanbul for 26 months in connection with the “Ergenekon” case, a trial which helped tame Turkey’s once all-powerful military.

The five-year trial, which reached a verdict last August, was key to a decade-long battle between Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party and a secularist establishment that had led modern Turkey from its foundation by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan is now engaged in a power struggle with a former ally, US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of using his influence in the judiciary and police to engineer a graft probe targeting the government. Gulen denies the charge.

The constitutional court said the failure of the lower court to publish its detailed verdict on the case and send it to the appeals court had violated a clause concerning personal freedom.

“It was decided... to send to the [lower] court a request to do what is necessary in ruling on the applicant’s release demand,” said the ruling on the court website. It was not clear why the detailed verdict had still not been completed.

Parliamentary speaker Cemil Cicek, from the ruling AK Party, hailed the ruling as a triumph of judicial reforms which have been pushed through parliament in recent years.

“This means that subjects such as long detention periods, rights violations and the failure to try people fairly can now be resolved in Turkey,” he told Reuters.

Taming the army

Erdogan is widely believed to have relied heavily on Gulen’s influence in breaking the power of the army, which carried out three coups in Turkey between 1960 and 1980 and forced an Islamist-led government from power in 1997.

Gulen’s critics say his followers were instrumental in bringing to court the “Ergenekon” case and another alleged conspiracy, dubbed “Sledgehammer”.

In the “Ergenekon” case, a network of secular nationalists was alleged to have planned killings and bombings to trigger a coup. Defendants included army officers, politicians, academics and journalists. They denied the charges.

Military commanders in the “Sledgehammer” case were accused of plotting to bomb mosques and stoke conflict with Greece with the same goal. More than 300 officers were convicted in that case in September 2012 and the appeals court upheld most of the convictions.

Critics said the charges in both cases were trumped up and aimed at stifling opposition in Turkey. They accused Erdogan of trying to exert political influence over the courts.

Erdogan was initially a strong advocate of the cases, but in the last two years has become increasingly critical of state prosecutors, expressing disquiet at the length of time the defendants have been held in custody.

Celal Ulgen, a lawyer for many of the defendants, said the court ruling could lead to the release of the other prisoners, but did not expect a decision on Basbug’s case on Thursday.

“It could set an example for hundreds of prisoners. Those tried under Ergenekon have a solid reason to apply for the same procedure. I am sure they will,” he told Reuters.

Within weeks of the corruption investigation emerging, Erdogan mooted in January the retrial of those convicted of trying to overthrow him in an apparent bid to discredit those in the judiciary he saw as concocting the scandal.

His top adviser Yalcin Akdogan said the military had been the victim of a plot and the army subsequently filed a criminal complaint over the cases, arguing that evidence against serving and retired officers had been fabricated.

Last month, the government pushed through parliament a law completing the abolition of the special authority courts which tried the Ergenekon defendants and several hundred military officers in the separate Sledgehammer conspiracy.

President Abdullah Gul approved that law on Thursday.