KUALA LUMPUR: An intensified underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will start in about two weeks' time, Australian premier Tony Abbott said Saturday as he visited Malaysia to discuss the issue.
Abbott said the hunt for the jet, which inexplicably veered off its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8 with 239 people aboard, would continue for as long as necessary.
Australia has been spearheading the hunt for the plane, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, but the massive air, sea and underwater search has so far failed to find any wreckage.
Speaking after talks with his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak, Abbot said the new phase of the search would begin "in about a fortnight's time", in addition to ongoing mapping through a sonar survey.
"(The underwater search) will utilise the best available technology. It will last as long as it needs to scour the seabed," he told reporters.
Experts have used technical data to finalise MH370's most likely resting place deep under the Indian Ocean.
The more intense underwater search will focus on a dauntingly vast stretch of ocean measuring 60,000 square kilometres (23,000 square miles).
Najib's government and the national flag carrier were widely criticised over what many saw as a disorganised and secretive response to MH370's disappearance.
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