Passengers with names on the manifest that match stolen passports makes it seem suspiciously so:
Vietnamese air force planes on Saturday spotted two large oil slicks close to where a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people had crashed.
The air force planes were part of a multinational search operation launched after Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday morning.
CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports from Beijing that for hours the arrivals board at Beijing's
airport only read that the flight was delayed.
Meanwhile, foreign ministry officials in Italy and Austria said the names of two nationals from countries listed on the flight's manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand.
In Washington, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that U.S. officials were aware of reports about the stolen passports but so far haven't determined any nexus to terrorism.
The officials said it's still very early in the investigation and at this point they were not aware of any threat streams connected to the event, Orr reports.
Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said, "We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks."
Italy's Foreign Ministry said the Italian man who was listed as being a passenger, Luigi Maraldi, was traveling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane. It said he reported his passport stolen last August.
Austria's Foreign Ministry confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matched an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand. It said the Austrian was not on the plane, but would not confirm the person's identity.
Two-thirds of the missing plane's passengers were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.
In Washington, the State Department confirmed that three Americans were aboard the jet. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement that officials from the U.S. Embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Beijing are in contact with families of the passengers. The department says it's working to determine if other U.S. citizens may have been on the flight.
A Malaysia Airlines passenger manifest provided to CBS News identifies one of the Americans as Philip Wood.
The oil slicks were spotted late Saturday off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 6 miles and 9 miles long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement. There was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner.
airport only read that the flight was delayed.Much more at the CBS News link.
God comfort loved one left behind, rest the perished souls and bring justice to those responsible should this indeed turn out to be a terrorist attack.
