KUALA LUMPUR (REUTERS) - Malaysia's military radar detected what could have been the jetliner missing since Saturday in an area in the northern Malacca Straits, hundreds of miles from the spot where the plane dropped off air traffic screens, the air force chief said on Wednesday.

Mr Rodzali Daud told a news conference that the tracking was at 2.15am local time on Saturday, about 45 minutes after the plane with 239 people on board vanished from air traffic control screens midway between Malaysia's east coast and Vietnam.

He said the radar tracking was at a point 200 miles north-west of Penang island on Malaysia's west coast.

But he stressed that the information needed to be corraborated.