DHAKA: The underwater search for black boxes from the missing Malaysia Flight MH370 is at a critical juncture.

Malaysia’s Defence Minister and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Saturday.

A lot rests on what the mini-submarine scouring a stretch of the Indian Ocean finds by Sunday after which officials may consider adding on ‘private and commercial assets’ to the search efforts, he said at a press conference here to take stock of search operations.

A US Navy deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Bluefin-21, is currently scouring a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean floor for signs of the plane, which disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people on board.

The Bluefin is currently searching a narrow, circular area with a radius of 10 km around a location in which one of four pings believed to have come from the black box recorders on the plane was detected on April 8.

BDST: 1448 HRS, APR 19, 2014