Missing Malaysian airliner: False passport holders not Asian looking

Malaysian authorities Monday confirmed that two passengers who boarded the missing Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines plane with false passports were not of Asian appearance.

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, denied at a media conference an earlier report that the two passengers boarding Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with false European passports were Asian looking, but he did not elaborate on how they looked and where they were from, Xinhua reported.  

Local media earlier Monday reported that one of the two suspects who used the stolen passports has been identified. 

The man was identified using CCTV footage provided by the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), the Malaysian Star reported citing Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar.

"I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian but cannot divulge which country he is from yet," Abu Bakar said at the Kajang police headquarters Sunday.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people on board vanished without a trace about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur early Saturday. The Boeing 777-200ER was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast into the South China Sea.

The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41 a.m. local time Saturday and was due to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. the same day. The 227 passengers on the flight included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.