Minister: 'High possibility' debris from MH370

Malaysia's transport minister said on Wednesday that there is a "high possibility" that that debris from an airplane found near Mozambique is from a Boeing 777 jet. While this is the same model as the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 aircraft, Liow Tiong Lai said he could yet not confirm that it was a piece of the vanished plane.

"I urge everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to MH370 at this time," the minister wrote on Twitter, adding that the origin of the objects found were "yet to be confirmed and verified."

According to US broadcaster NBC, ahead of Liow's statements that an object resembling a horizontal stabilizer from a 777 had been discovered in the sea between Mozambique and Madagascar.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard. While investigators believe the plane changed course in the southern Indian Ocean, possibly due to inclement weather, and then floundered, no crash site has ever been found.

The first evidence of the plane's fate was not discovered until July 2015, when a man on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, a French territory, found a piece of an airplane wing that was later confirmed as part of MH370. Until now, this has been the only definitive proof of the jet's fate.

es/sms (Reuters, AFP)