Malaysia’s transport minister has said a team on the French territory of Réunion has collected more apparent plane debris – a claim contradicted by French officials, who say no new material in the search for missing flight MH370 has been turned over to French authorities.
Liow Tiong Lai said a Malaysian team found the objects, including a window and some aluminium foil, but an aide to the minister later said it was “window material” rather than a window that was recovered.
“I can only ascertain that it’s plane debris,” Liow said. “I cannot confirm that it’s from MH370.”
Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai says more possible MH370 debris has been sent to France for analysis
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing in March last year with 239 people on board. On Wednesday, Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister,said a wing piece found last month on Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, was from the doomed flight. Najib was backed up by his transport minister on Thursday, who said a maintenance seal and other details prove that the wing part belonged to MH370.
MH370 debris found: will it solve the mystery of how the flight vanished?
Authorities inFrance, the US and Australia have stopped short of full confirmation, and the dissonant comments have infuriated many families of those on board the plane, who have waited more than 500 days for concrete clues into the fates of their loved ones.
Liow said differences with other countries amounted to “a choice of words”.
“They want to continue with additional tests. We respect their decision,” Liow said of the French.
Investigations have resumed at a French military laboratory into the wing part, known as a flaperon. French prosecutors were more cautious in their initial findings than Najib, saying only that there was a “very high probability” that the part was from MH370. But they confirmed the part was from a Boeing 777, of the type that vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Many families of those on board, who have waited nearly 17 months for tangible evidence, said they were fed up with the mixed messages.
“Why the hell do you have one confirm and one not?” Sara Weeks, the sister of New Zealander Paul Weeks, who was on board, told Associated Press. “Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don’t need to go through this turmoil?”
Dai Shuqin, the sister of one of the passengers, was among about a dozen Chinese relatives who held a demonstration outside the Malaysia Airlines offices in Beijing.
“France is being cautious about it, butMalaysia is desperate to put an end to this case and run away from all responsibilities,” she said.
Zhang Meiling, 62, whose daughter and son-in-law were on the plane, said: “I want to kill him [Najib]. What he said is nonsense. I just want to kill him.”
Families say debris confirmation won’t bring closure
China is home to more than half of the people who were on the plane, and many relatives called on the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to help them in their quest for justice.
“I don’t believe it,” said Bao Lanfang, 63, whose son, daughter-in-law and three-year-old grandchild were on MH370. “It has been 515 [days] – that is enough time for them to have produced fake debris.”
Many of the Chinese relatives continue to cling to the hope that their loved ones might be alive. In a statement, China’s foreign ministry expressed “grief and sorrow for those on board” and sent “profound sympathy and condolences to their families”.
Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is leading the search for the crash site of MH370, said it would continue scanning the seabed 2,000km (1,200 miles) west of the Western Australian coastline. The agency said it was confident the discovery on Réunion was consistent with the crash site being within the search area.
Réunion is about 4,000km from the search area, which was doubled to 120,000 sq km in April.
The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the underwater search for the rest of the plane, which has so far cost more than A$100m (£47m), would continue.
“We owe it to the hundreds of millions of people who use our skies, we owe it to the 24 million Australians who use our skies, we owe it to them to try to ensure that air travel is as safe as it possibly can be, to try to get to the bottom of this terrible mystery,” he said on Thursday.
Publicly, Australian officials have withheld criticism of Najib’s announcement, with the Australian transport minister, Warren Truss, saying Australia respected Malaysia’s right to make that call, given it was the government in charge of the investigation.
“Of course there [are] still some Is not dotted and Ts not crossed. There is still a very small element of doubt,” Truss said.
Privately, however, there were questions about why Najib had moved forward with the statement before all countries had agreed.
An Australian government official told Associated Press Malaysia wasn’t supposed to make the announcement, and had gone out on its own making a conclusive statement before getting the evidence to back it up.
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