MELBOURNE
Malaysia's prime minister said Thursday that aircraft debris found on a French island in the Indian Ocean is likely to be from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Najib Razak said both the location of the debris and drift analysis provided to the Malaysian investigation team are consistent, however he advised public to wait for actual confirmation.
The large piece of wreckage was found Wednesday on the island of Reunion east of Madagascar.
It is being shipped by French authorities to Toulouse for inspection by France’s BEA crash investigations agency and a Malaysian outfit.
“A Malaysian team is on the way to Toulouse now. It includes senior representatives from the Ministry of Transport, the Department of Civil Aviation, the MH370 investigation team, and Malaysia Airlines," Razak wrote in a Facebook posting Thursday
“Simultaneously, a second Malaysian team is travelling to where the debris was found on Reunion [Island]."
He promised the families of those on board the ill-fated aircraft that the government “will not give up.”
“We have had many false alarms before, but for the sake of the families who have lost loved ones, and suffered such heartbreaking uncertainty, I pray that we will find out the truth so that they may have closure and peace,” he said.
Beijing-bound MH370, which vanished in March 2014 an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, was carrying 239 passengers and crewmembers.
Search and rescue operations have involved around 65 aircraft and 95 ships, as well as experts from 25 countries.
After a 10-month intensive undersea search for the vanished flight, on Jan. 29 Malaysia declared that Flight MH370 was lost in an accident, with all on board killed.
Malaysia announced in April that it had spent $22 million on the search for the plane.
Calculated to the end of 2014, it equalled half the amount spent on the world’s most expensive search for a missing airliner -- the hunt for an Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, which cost $44 million over three years.
