France calls off MH370 wreckage search

Paris, Aug 18: French authorities have said they were calling off the hunt for the wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 after more than one week of air and sea searches off its Indian Ocean island of Reunion yielded no results, media reported on Tuesday.

The island's top authority, however, said its search teams would maintain "vigilance", The Local news portal reported.

A wing component -- flaperon -- washed up on the island on July 29 and it was confirmed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to be part of the Beijing-bound Boeing 777 aircraft which went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people onboard.

The finding raised hopes of finally solving the mystery of what happened to the plane, prompting investigators to search a maritime surface of 10,000 sq.km. and scour the island's eastern coastline.

But the searches "have not led to the identification of anything that could have a link with a plane", the French state's representative on the island, Dominique Sorain, said in a statement.

IANS