Australia resumes search for crashed Malaysian jet

The search was suspended yesterday due to heavy rain, rough seas and gale-force winds

Australian authorities today resumed the search operation for the wreckage of the crashed Malaysian jetliner from the West Australian coast.

The search led by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) was suspended yesterday due to heavy rain, rough seas and gale-force winds.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that the search for the lost Malaysian jet isn't open-ended but Australia won't lightly abandon efforts to locate the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

"Australia is throwing everything it could at the search, which has resumed after a 24-hour delay due to bad weather," he said.

Abbott said there was a lot of debris in the area and Australia would keep searching until there was no hope of finding anything.

"We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle," he was quoted as saying by a TV channel.

"It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon," he said.

According to an ABC report here, 12 aircraft and several ships are expected to join the operations today.

Six countries are now assisting in the search, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Japan, China and South Korea.

Expert analysis of a handful of faint signals sent from the plane to an Inmarsat satellite have led officials to conclude that the plane crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

Aircraft and ships from over 20 nations have been hunting for the Boeing 777-200 since it disappeared on March 8.

The Beijing-bound jet was carrying 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals - when it went missing an hour after take off from Kuala Lumpur.