Malaysia plane: China checks new ‘debris’ images
China is investigating new satellite images of debris in the southern Indian Ocean, possibly from missing flight MH370, Malaysian officials say.
Warning: the video above contains flash photography
Malaysia’s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein announced the news after being handed a note at his daily breifing on Saturday.
He said that one piece of debris measured 22.5m by 13m.
He confirmed that the Chinese government would give more details on Saturday.
Flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur for beijing on March 8, carrying 239 people.
Officials believe the plane was deliberately taken off course.
We now hearing object spotted by Chinese satellite 13m wide not 30m wide: the smaller it is, the more likely to be plane wreckage we think.
— Jonathan Rugman (@jrug) March 22, 2014
Mr Hussein said: “The news that I have just received is that the Chinese ambassador received satellite image of floating objects in the southern corridor and they will be sending ships to verify.”
China is one of 26 nations involved in the search for flight MH370. Most of the pople aboard the flight were Chinese nationals.”
Planes and vessels were already searching the southern Indian ocean following earlier satelllite images this week that detected possible debris 2,500 south-west of Perth in Australia.
Before announcing the news from China, Mr Hussein said that all means were being pursued to narrow the search corridor and that planes intended to seach 10,500 square nautical miles on Saturday.
