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Australia says ‘throwing everything we have’ to solve MH370 puzzle

Australian

Prime Minister Tony Abbott today vowed to find the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which authorities now believe is lying in the Indian Ocean, some 2500 km southwest of Perth.

"We owe it to the families, we owe it to an anxious world to do everything we can to finally locate some wreckage and to do whatever we can to solve the riddle of this extraordinarily ill-fated flight," the BBC quoted Abbott as saying.

Australia has been at the forefront of the international search mission. To date, 26 countries are involved in this search operation which is being coordinated by Malaysia.

"There's a terrible trauma involved - there's the uncertainty, there's the anguish. It's just an unspeakable time for these people and if they want to come to Australia we'll make them welcome and we'll do everything we can to assist," Abbott said, referring to the families of the 239 passengers and crew on board the flight.

Abbott was earlier quoted in an AFP report saying that the search would continue until there was no hope of finding anything.

"We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle," he told the Nine Network.

"It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon."

According to AFP, six countries are now assisting in the operation – Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, China and South Korea – to help bring some closure to relatives with definitive physical proof of the plane's destruction.

The US navy has also sent a specialised device to help find the "black box" of flight and cockpit voice data, along with a robotic underwater vehicle that can scan the ocean's depths.

The BBC reported that the Australian parliament in the capital, Canberra, observed a moment of silence today for passengers of the missing flight, which included six Australians. – March 26, 2014.