KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday confirmed that his step-grandmother was on board Flight MH17 that was downed over Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Siti Amirah was one of 44 Malaysians on board the Malaysia Airlines flight that was downed on Thursday killing all 289 people on board.

“I personally share the grief of the families on board #MH17,” Najib said in a Tweet. “My step-grandmother was one of the passengers.”

Family spokesman Faridah Abdullah told the Star newspaper Siti “was a very, very nice lady.”

Hishammuddin Hussein, a cousin of Najib, who is the country’s defense minister, said earlier that 83-year-old Sri Siti Amirah was on the flight. Siti Amirah was also Hishammuddin’s step-grandmother.

“My step-grandmother was in (the plane). I think we are angry but what can I do? Being angry won’t help,” he told reporters.

He also posted a photo of her in an Islamic headscarf with the message “Pls pray 4 her.”

The Star newspaper had earlier reported that Siti Amirah had embarked alone in Amsterdam on Flight MH17 en route to the Indonesian city of Jogjakarta.

She was scheduled to transit at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The Boeing 777 passenger jet carrying 298 people came down in flames late Thursday in cornfields in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine, with US officials saying it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

Siti Amirah, a native of Indonesia, was headed there to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, Islam’s biggest festival, at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Star report quoted a family spokeswoman as saying.

Malaysia and Indonesia are Muslim-majority countries.

“She was a very, very nice lady. A kind-hearted, beautiful woman. She was a homemaker who looked after my grandfather very well. We called her ‘ibu’ (mother),” the family spokeswoman told the newspaper.