Kuala Lumpur, Aug 5: Verification has confirmed that the debris found on Reunion Island belongs to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced here on Thursday.
“Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is in indeed from MH370,” the prime minister was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
“We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on March 24 last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” Razak said.
The two-metre-long flaperon was found on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, near Madagascar. It was examined at an aeronautical test centre in Toulouse, France. A flaperon is a part of the wing used to manage the lift and control the roll of an aircraft.
The ill-fated Malaysia Airlines jet was carrying 239 crew and passengers, including five Indians, when it disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 last year. The search operation had found no verified sign of the plane.
IANS