Malaysian PM says cannot confirm missing jetliner hijacked

KUALA LUMPUR, March 15 -- Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that no conclusive evidence shows missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was hijacked.

But the Boeing 777 aircraft did turn back from its last known location on civilian radar, and the signal the Malaysian military radar picked up at the north of the Strait of Malacca was from the missing plane, he added.

Satellite data shows the last communication with the plane was at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time (0011 GMT) on March 8, said the prime minister.

He said there is a "high degree of certainty" that the communication device aboard the jetliner was disabled and its movement showed "deliberate action."

Investigators are still exploring all possibilities about the disappearance of the jetliner with 249 people aboard, including 154 Chinese.

There were two possible corridors of the plane after its disappearance, the north one is from Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan while the south one is from Indonesia to the Indian Ocean, said the PM.

The Malaysian authorities have decided to end the search operation in the South China Sea and shift the focus of search efforts to the Indian Ocean, he added.

A multinational intensive search operation has so far failed to locate the plane, which disappeared from radar screen early Saturday last week while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.