New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas yesterday also reported seeing poten-tial wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.
“We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris,” Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. “It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370.”
We have separate satellite leads showing possible debris
The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km area of ocean, Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres in length.
Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.
An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-metre waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were also in the search zone.
Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-metre floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported.
The US has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defence vessel due in Perth in the coming days.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane’s communications systems.
A dozen aircraft from Australia, the US, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage yesterday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.
“The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be but it’s closer to Australia than anywhere else,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said before leading a moment of silence in Parliament.