Vietnam continues search for missing Malaysian jet

Vietnam will not suspend search for a missing Malaysian jetliner as the search and rescue operation continued into the fifth day on Wednesday, Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said at the National Committee for Search and Rescue in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Tuan denied the report that Vietnam would suspend or scale back search mission, however, Vietnam will expand search to inland area from waters off southern Phu Quoc Island, one of the major search area around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370's last known location before it vanished from radar screens early Saturday.

At present, the ongoing multinational search and rescue operation involves a total of 31 vessels including nine from Vietnam, and 22 aircraft including eight from Vietnam, according to the National Committee for Search and Rescue.

Earlier, a spokesman of Hanoi-based command post of Aviation Search and Rescue under Air Traffic Coordination Center said that as Malaysian authorities haven't confirmed detecting signal of the lost plane over Malacca Strait, Vietnam's search mission will continue as planned.

Meanwhile, Malaysian air force chief Wednesday denied a local media report that quoted him as saying that the missing Malaysian plane was last detected by the air force in the vicinity of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca.

General Rodzali Daud said that he "did not make any such statement" as published by Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian on Tuesday.

But he said that the air force did not ruled out the possibility of an air turnback before the aircraft vanished from radar screens.

This resulted in the search and rescue operation being widened to the waters off the west coast of Malay peninsula, he said.

There has been no confirmed information on the whereabouts of the ill-fated jetliner since it lost contact on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.