MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Twitter that there is "high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777" but warned against "undue speculation" as the information still needs to be "confirmed and verified."
The debris that washed ashore in Mozambique will now be taken to Australia to be examined by Malaysian and US experts. According to Australian media reports, it could be a piece of the horizontal stabilizer skin from the plane.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after takeoff. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777 aircraft.
On Thursday, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said that an international search-and-rescue operation to locate the remains of missing Malaysia Airlines plane was narrowing its search area and expected to find the plane by June 2016.
Of the 239 people on board the disappeared Boeing 777 passenger jet, six were Australian nationals.
In August 2015, a fragment of the plane’s wing (flaperon) was found on the French Island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, which helped to narrow down the search area.
