Some relatives of passengers who were on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said Tuesday that they are waiting for more conclusive analysis before they accept that debris found on an island in the Indian Ocean came from the missing jet.
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Their first order of business was determining whether the debris could be connected to an aircraft, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement Monday.
“At this stage, it is highly premature to speculate on whether this debris is in any way connected to MH370”.
The Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 239 people veered off its course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.
On August 6, this year, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak confirmed that the parts of the flaperon found on France’s territory, The Reunion Island was part of the aircraft.
Officials in Maldives said that the government has joined the multinational search operation for the wreckage after debris washed ashore during the past week.
“They have to be further analysed and will be brought back to Malaysia for verification”, he told reporters at the Hari Raya and 130th anniversary celebrations of the Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) Berhad in Kuala Lumpur today.
The remnants of a suitcase discovered the day after the flaperon have been sent to a French lab for testing.
Authorities in the Maldives were storing several flat pieces of unidentified wreckage in a warehouse this week ahead of the arrival of a team of Malaysian investigators searching for MH370, CNN reported.
The Australian drift models suggest the winds and ocean currents would have pushed the aircraft debris in a predominantly westerly direction, toward southern Africa.
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Experts have already cast doubt on the find, and a report in the Haveeru newspaper said the captain of a barge that capsized in February believed the debris was from his vessel.
