Kuala Lumpur: The whereabouts of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continue to be a mystery, even as an intensified international search and rescue operation was launched on Sunday with the US and China dispatching warships to assist in the mission. Over 40 ships and 22 planes were roped in to hunt for the missing Boeing 777 jet, which disappeared mysteriously with 239 people on board, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

In the latest revelation, Malaysian Air Force chief told a news conference that a recording from the military radar suggested that the missing jet may have made a turn-back towards Kuala Lumpur. "There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course," said General Rodzali Daud. "One of the possibilities is that it was returning to Kuala Lumpur," he added. However, Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that had the plane turned back, it would have set off alarm bells.

Malaysia on Sunday launched a terror probe into the mysterious disappearance of the plane after it emerged that two passengers boarded the flight with stolen passports, even as a massive multinational search mission continued for the second day without any success. The discovery that two passengers were carrying stolen passports raised the unsettling possibility of foul play. "We are not ruling out anything," the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said in Kuala Lumpur on being asked whether terror angle was being probed. On two impostors who boarded the flight using passports lost by an Italian and an Austrian, Malaysian Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities would screen "the entire manifest" of the flight. The minister confirmed the FBI has dispatched its officers to Malaysia. "At the same time our own intelligence has been activated, and of course, the counter-terrorism units... from all the relevant countries have been informed," he said. Hussein also did not rule out the possibility of a hijack.