SHAH ALAM - Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and its passengers nine years ago is a fact that must be accepted.
In a Facebook statement in conjunction with the anniversary of MH370's disappearance on Wed, he said that although the incident was not expected, it is a fact that people must accept that the passengers and crew members of MH370 are lost.
"We must accept the fact that it happened. We don't want it to happen, but it has, and we must accept the fact that the flight was lost along with the passengers and crew members.
"The major possibility is that they are no longer alive. It is believed that flight was taken over by other individuals and flown to another destination, the passengers' fates were surely the same as the aircraft.
"What happened to the aircraft happened to its passengers as well," he said.
However, Dr Mahathir prayed and hoped for the country to continue its efforts in searching for MH370.
"However, if we don't find the aircraft after years, we must accept the fact they were lost, even though it is difficult," he said.
He said there has been no proof of what happened to MH370 until now.
"Some stated the aircraft had crashed at sea. However, we have no proof to show that it crashed.
"We also did not have proof of it landing in any location or crashing," he said.
He said for the victims' families, it will be difficult to accept as there is no closure and they do not know what happened to their family members.
The MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to Beijing on March 8, 2014, and was reported missing on radar screens two hours after departure.
The large-scale search operations by many international organisations and countries covered areas spanning millions of square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean, but MH370 or its remains have yet to be found.