WATCH: Malaysian authorities say this partial wing is being taken to France where investigators will determine if is part of the missing plane. CBS’ Jonathan Vigliotti reports from London.
TORONTO – More debris, which could be the first trace of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, was found near Reunion Island Thursday where a piece of a jetliner wing washed up on Wednesday.
Gardeners on the French island reportedly found a damaged suitcase Thursday morning, not too far from where island workers found a piece of an airplane wing, measuring about two metres long by one metre wide on Wednesday.
The wing debris will be sent to France to be identified.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday that a team of investigators is on its way to France.
“We have had many false alarms before, but for the sake of the families who have lost loved ones, and suffered such heartbreaking uncertainty, I pray that we will find out the truth so that they may have closure and peace,” Najib Razak said on his personal blog.
A U.S. official says investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris that washed up on Reunion Island is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model of aircraft as the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370.
The Associated Press reports investigators, including one with Boeing, have identified the component as a “flaperon” from the edge of a 777 wing.
According to local media, island workers found a piece of an airplane wing, measuring about two metres long by one metre wide.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board.
The jetliner veered sharply off course and flew for hours with its communications systems disabled before disappearing on route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
Several ships scoured more than 60,000-square-kilometre area of the Indian Ocean, about 1,800 kilometres west of Australia.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters at the United Nations a team has been sent to verify the identity of the plane wreckage.
“Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can ever confirm that it is belonged to MH370,” he said. “So we dispatched a team to investigate on this issue.”
In June 2009, a Yemenia Air flight crashed off the African coast, killing more than 150 people on board.
Although nothing has been confirmed, investigators said the piece that was discovered this morning had been in the water for quite some time.
“It was covered in shells, so one would say it had been in the water a long time,” the Agence France-Presse reported a witness as saying.
On Wednesday, Malaysia Airlines said “it would be too premature for the airline to speculate the origin” of the debris.
–with files from The Associated Press
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