The widower of a pregnant woman killed by shrapnel from a Takata air bag in Malaysian Borneo in July held their dying daughter in his arms for 10 minutes as the prematurely delivered infant's life sapped away.

Welhelmo Rodriguez Caido, 41, said doctors performed an emergency operation in an effort to save their unborn baby girl after the Honda City car driven by his wife crashed head-on with another car. The infant was delivered alive but in critical condition and died two days later.

"Imagine, two lives died in my arms. My wife died in my arms, and then my baby also," Caido said in an interview in Kuala Belait, a quiet oil town in the sultanate of Brunei where he works as an electrician on offshore oil rigs.