Malaysia on Thursday formally declared the passengers and crew of missing flight MH370 to be presumed dead, a step that it said opens the door for compensation payments but which was angrily rejected by distraught relatives.

Malaysian authorities and the airline had until now refrained from drawing firm conclusions about the fate of the plane and its 239 passengers and crew, as many desperate next-of-kin continue to insist it may have landed safely somewhere.

Malaysia will release an interim report on its investigation into Flight MH370 on March 7, a day before the first anniversary of the jet's mysterious disappearance, an official said Wednesday.

However, deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi declined comment on whether the report would contain any revelations on the fate of the Malaysia Airlines jet.

Philippine security forces and a Muslim rebel group said Sunday they had clashed in the country's south with an unspecified number of casualties, in violence rarely seen since the signing of a peace treaty.

Police commandos and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) members fought near the remote town of Mamasapano on the main southern island of Mindanao before dawn, regional military spokesman Captain Joan Petinglay said.

Malaysian authorities have removed detainees suspected of supporting the Islamic State group (IS) from the general jail population after some were found preaching the extremist IS ideology to fellow inmates, the home minister said Thursday.

"They have been found to influence other criminals in joining the ideology," Zahid Hamidi told reporters, saying the IS suspects were being housed in dedicated cells blocks.

Warning alarms in AirAsia flight QZ8501 were "screaming" as the pilots desperately tried to stabilize the plane just before it plunged into the Java Sea last month, a crash investigator said Wednesday.

The noise of several alarms -- including one that indicated the plane was stalling -- can be heard going off in recordings from the black box in the Airbus A320-200's cockpit, the investigator told AFP, requesting anonymity.

The West's defence of Charlie Hebdo's right to offend is testing the patience of Muslims even in moderate Indonesia and Malaysia, who fear it could fuel radical sentiment kindled by the Islamic State group.

Publicly, the issue has stirred barely a ripple in the Southeast Asian neighbours, underscoring their cultural and philosophical gap with the rest of the Muslim world, where it has triggered outrage.

A Malaysian police officer sentenced to hang over the killing of a Mongolian model in a sensational scandal linked to corruption allegations has been detained in Australia, a report said Wednesday.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said Sirul Azhar Umar, convicted of the 2006 killing of 28-year-old Altantuya Shaariibuu, had been picked up by immigration officials in the state of Queensland.

Malaysia trimmed its 2015 growth forecast Tuesday and said its fiscal deficit would be wider than expected after the sharp fall in global oil prices threw a wrench in the petroleum-exporting nation's economic plans.

Prime Minister Najib Razak called the situation a "reality check" but assured Malaysians the country was not in trouble, unveiling measures he said would keep Southeast Asia's third-largest economy moving forward.

Indonesian divers Friday made a fresh attempt to reach the main body of an AirAsia plane that crashed in the sea last month with 162 people on board, after their initial bid failed due to bad weather and rough seas.

Flight QZ8501 went down in the Java Sea on December 28 in stormy weather during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. 

Indonesian divers on Thursday descended to the main body of an AirAsia jet that crashed last month, hoping to recover the bulk of the disaster's victims, a day after it was finally located by a navy ship.

Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, with 162 people on board.