Three passengers from two Shenzhen-based companies were confirmed on board of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early Saturday, Shenzhen News reported.

Two of them are from Huawei and one is from ZTE. ZTE confirmed one of its employees, Jia Yanlin, was aboard on a company Weibo post. Shortly afterwards, Huawei confirmed two of its employees were travelling on the plane.

A total of 227 passengers from 14 countries and12 crew members were on board. Two passengers, one from Austria and another from Italy, were found travelling on stolen passports, raising the possibility of foul play, but no links have been confirmed.

The Beijing-bound flight vanished about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41am local time, the Guardian reported. Malaysia and Vietnam are currently on site searching for the wreckage. China sent two warships to waters where the missing flight might have crashed. US FBI agents and technical experts were also sent to probe if there was any terror link to the cause of the disappearance.

Reuters reported earlier citing a senior source saying that mid-air disintegration might be the cause of the plane crash as no confirmed wreckage has been found so far. The investigation is still ongoing.

Home page photo credit: Reuters