A friend of a passenger onboard the missing flight MH370 cries at the lobby of a hotel in Beijing
A friend of a passenger onboard the missing flight MH370 cries as he waits for news from Malaysia Airlines at the lobby of a hotel in Beijing, March 14, 2014. A new search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may be opened in the Indian Ocean, the White House said, significantly broadening the potential location of the plane, which disappeared nearly a week ago with 239 people on board. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Update on March 24, 2014: Flight MH370 'crashed in south Indian Ocean' - Malaysia PM

Missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 might have crashed into the Indian Ocean, according to a Pentagon official.

ABC reported that the anonymous senior official from Pentagon claimed that the flight might have crashed into the Indian Ocean. He also said that the USS Kidd was on its way to start operations, but it would take 24 hours for the ship to reach the destination. The unnamed Pentagon official also said that the flight flew for around five hours even after dropping off the radar.

The news agency further reported that a couple of U.S. official told them that, according to the United States, two communication systems in MH370 shut down separately. The U.S. officials believe that the data reporting system shut down at 1:07 am, while the transponder shut down at 1:21 am. Another source claimed that the flight did not encounter any "catastrophic failure." The aviation consultant of ABC News, John Nance, said that it might be an indication that the act was "deliberate" as U.S. investigators claimed to the news agency that the communication modes had been "systematically shut down."

Another ABC source said that the U.S. team was convinced that there had been "manual intervention." It was pretty much likely that it was neither a "catastrophic malfunction" nor an "accident/" Senior U.S. officials also told ABC that the missing flight did continue to "ping" one satellite every hour even after the contact with radar had been lost. The flight is reportedly quipped with the Airplane Health Management system which pings one satellite on hourly basis. The system indicates how long a plane stays aloft.

Meanwhile, the transport minister of Malaysia, Hishammuddin Hussein, strongly rejected the claim that the plane flew hours after losing contact with radar. He also denied that MH370 might have been diverted intentionally. Mr Hussein, however, said that Malaysia was working "very closely" with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.