The Russian passenger aboard vanished Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 is a 43-year-old diving instructor and a member of the Jewish community in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, a news report said.
Missing passenger Nikolai Brodsky was traveling from Bali, Indonesia, to his home in Irkutsk when the plane suddenly dropped off the radar without a trace on Saturday.
He had been on vacation with nine other Russian divers in Bali, said Vitaly Markov, first secretary of the Russian embassy in Malaysia.
Rabbi Aharon Wagner, head of Irkutsk's Jewish community, informed Brodsky's wife and his two sons — aged 11 and 17 — when he learned that their father was on the flight, The Times of Israel reported.
Brodsky "was close to Judaism, and the entire community was hard-hit by the news of the tragedy," Wagner was quoted as saying by the Kikar Hashabbat news site.
The missing jet was carrying 227 passengers from 14 countries, mainly China and Malaysia, and a crew of 12, all Malaysian nationals, the airline said in a statement.
The plane was heading from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing, China.
The international search mission has yet to turn up any wreckage, leaving accident investigators no way of determining what happened.
Military radar indicates that the plane turned west, away from its planned route, before disappearing, the Malaysian Air Force said, BBC reported Tuesday.
Attention earlier turned to the passenger manifest after it was discovered that two of the flight's passengers were traveling with stolen passports.
On Tuesday, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said that the stolen passports were used by two Iranian nationals, but that there was no indication that they were acting on behalf of a terrorist group.
Malaysian police officials said that one of the Iranian men was probably attempting to migrate to Germany to reunite with his mother.
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