Wreckage found near Africa may be from missing flight MH370

The flap fragments of a plane, apparently of a Boeing 777, which have been washed up on an Indian Ocean island, probably belong to the ill-fated missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The two-meter long piece of wreckage was found by people cleaning up a beach of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, east of Madagascar, on Wednesday, some 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) away from the last known location of the doomed flight.

French officials are now investigating whether the washed-up plane fragment is from the missing flight MH370.

Officials from Boeing company, the manufacturer of the missing plane, have photo-analyzed the wreckage and initially suggested that the debris is consistent in appearance with a Boeing 777's flaperon, due to a unique element of the flaperon that experts believe they are seeing in photos as well.

Malaysia also dispatched a team to Reunion Island on Wednesday to investigate the debris.

“Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can further confirm whether it belongs to MH370… [But] we hope that we can identify it as soon as possible” Liow Tiong Lai, the Malaysian transport minister, told reporters in New York.

The Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crews, took off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, to the Chinese capital city of Beijing, but lost contact with the airline half an hour later and vanished mysteriously at night over the South China Sea after turning away from its north-bound route from Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian authorities in January declared that all people on board were presumed dead and despite extensive search by international teams, not a single part of the plane has been found ever since its disappearance.

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