Maldives debris not from MH370

Kuala Lumpur, Aug 14: Debris found in the island nation of Maldives do not belong to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Friday.

"My team has witnessed the debris and most of them are negative. They are not related to MH370 and not even plane material," he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

He added that if any object related to the plane is found, it would be sent for analysis, EFE reported.

Flight MH370 with 239 people onboard, left Kuala Lumpur on March 8 at 12.41 a.m., scheduled to land in Beijing roughly six hours later, but it disappeared from the radar screens some 40 minutes after takeoff.

An international investigation believes the plane changed course and crashed without fuel at a remote area in the southern Indian Ocean to the west of Australia.

The first physical evidence to support this theory, a wing component - flaperon - was found in July 29 on the coast of the French island territory of La Reunion, located east of Madagascar.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on August 5 that the flaperon was from the missing plane, while those in charge of analysing the piece have said there is only a strong presumption.

The search for more possible debris from MH370 will continue until early next week.

Meanwhile, a team of specialists, with boats and submarines are scouring an area of 60,000 sqkm in the Indian Ocean where they believed the plane crashed.

IANS