Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian official said on Friday that 22 pieces of debris have been found so far along coasts off South Africa, Mozambique, Mauritius and Tanzania - and two have been confirmed, while another four are "almost certain", to be part of the MH370 aircraft.
Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai made the remarks a day after a piece of debris found on the island of Pemba, off the coast of Tanzania in June this year was confirmed to be an inboard section of the outboard flap on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
According to Malaysia's state news agency Bernama, Liow said Thursday's conclusion, along with the confirmation of the plane's flaperon, found on Reunion Island in July last year, could help investigators unravel how the incident had actually happened to the missing aircraft.
Apart from the two confirmed and the four pieces with high possibility, Liow said the rest were hard to determine because there were no serial number nor any other details on them.
According to a summary report posted online by the Malaysian government in August, more than a dozen items of the discovered pieces are "under evaluation."
Quoting the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Liow added the drifting pattern of the debris showed that the search operation was within the right area. To date, the search for the missing aircraft has covered more than 110,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean, off Australia's west coast.
The government of Malaysia, Australia and China jointly announced in July that the search operation would be suspended upon completion of the current search area, but promised to resume search should new evidence emerge.
Xinhua