Possible wreckage from Malaysian plane spotted

Vietnamese searchers on Sunday spotted possible aircraft debris after combing the sea for nearly 48 hours in the hunt for a Malaysian passenger jet that vanished with 239 people aboard, officials said.

The discovery, which could confirm the worst fears of anguished relatives, came after Malaysia’s government launched a terror probe into the Boeing 777’s disappearance, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports.

“We received information from a Vietnamese plane saying that they found two broken objects, which seem like those of an aircraft, located about 50 miles (80 kilometres) to the south-west of Tho Chu Island,” said an official from Vietnam’s National Committee for Search and Rescue, who did not want to be named.

The island is part of a small archipelago off the southwestern tip of Vietnam, and lies northeast of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, from where Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 left early Saturday bound for Beijing.

“As it is night they cannot fish them out for proper identification. They have located the position of the areas and flown back to land,” the Vietnamese official added.

Planes and boats would be sent back to the area Monday to investigate further, he said.

Two large oil slicks which authorities suspect were caused by jet fuel were detected late Saturday farther south of the island chain, and observed later by an AFP journalist aboard a Vietnamese spotter plane.

Both MAS and Malaysia’s civil aviation authority, however, said they had no new information to offer after the apparent Vietnamese discovery.

Malaysian officials said earlier that MH370 may have inexplicably turned back towards Kuala Lumpur.

The plane, captained by a veteran MAS pilot, had relayed no indications of distress, and weather at the time was said to be stable.

The United States sent an FBI team to investigate, but US officials stressed there was as yet no evidence of terrorism.

AFP