The first batch of family members of the passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Beijing on Tuesday morning.

According to the joint working group of the Chinese government who received the family members at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, there are twelve relatives of the passengers, including nine Chinese and three Indians.

The family members did not meet with the media waiting for their arrival and they will be accommodated by the Malaysia Airlines in hotels around Kuala Lumpur.

The joint working group arrived here on Monday night to handle the matters related to the missing Malaysian Airlines jet.

The 13-member group is composed of officials with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

Guo Shaochun, chief of the joint working group and deputy head of the Department of Consular Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, said on arrival that the group will start working immediately.

China has been making all-out efforts to help search and locate the missing flight MH370 with 12 crew members and 227 passengers on board including 154 Chinese.

The Malaysian authorities are working closely with the Chinese government in handling matters related to the missing Malaysian Airlines aircraft, Hishamuddin Hussein, acting minister of transportation, said after meeting with a delegation of China's Ministry of Public Security on Monday afternoon.

He said the delegation as well as the joint working group came here to help with the search and rescue operation, offering support to family members of the passengers and identifying two passengers boarding the flight with stolen passports.

Hussein noted that the Chinese delegation's involvement does not mean the two passengers boarding with false passports are Chinese. The closed-circuit television videos concerning the two passengers had been given to intelligence agencies for investigation, he added.

The acting minister appealed to the media not to report unverified and false information which would be unfair to the families of the passengers and distract the search and rescue operation.

The whereabouts of flight MH370 operated by a Boeing 777-200 has not been known since it lost contact with air traffic control off eastern Malaysian coast early on Saturday morning on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, though an international search operation was intensified and widened throughout a large sea area around the last known location before it vanished from the radar screen.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2014)