Malaysia to table Cabinet paper on expert panel for MH370 crisis

PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The paper on the Panel of International Experts to look into the MH370 tragedy will be tabled by Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein in Cabinet on Wednesday.

"The panel will be placed under the Technical Committee chaired by my deputy Datuk Abd Aziz Kaprawi," Mr Hishammuddin said in a Twitter post.

He also said that the Asset Deployment Committee, chaired by Deputy Defence Minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri, had already considered further assets that could be deployed to assist in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

The Next of Kin Committee chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Datuk Hamzah Zainuddin was already in Beijing to brief the families, he added.

"The search continues ... continue to hope and pray everyone," he said.

In Perth, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said up to 10 military aircraft and 12 ships would assist in Wednesday's search for flight MH370.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling approximately 37,948 sq km. The centre of the search area lies approximately 1584 km north west of Perth.

The mini-submarine Bluefin-21 is currently completing mission 10 in the underwater search area and has now covered more than 80 per cent of the focused underwater search area.

The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of 10km radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection which occurred on April 8.

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