Malaysia Airlines MH370: French satellites spot objects in missing jet search area

Updated

French satellites have detected images of "floating debris" in an area of the southern Indian Ocean which is currently being scoured for wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Malaysia's transport ministry said France passed on new satellite images showing "potential objects" in the so-called southern search corridor, about 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth.

"Malaysia immediately relayed these images to the Australian rescue coordination centre," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement gave no details of the number, size or precise location of the objects shown in the French pictures.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Peter Lloyd reports on French satellite images (ABC News)

The images will be the focus for search planes due to take off from the Pearce Air Force base in Perth this morning, with Chinese and Japanese military aircraft due to arrive to help out.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, including six Australians.

Authorities last night completed a fourth day of sorties into the search zone, where they are now also searching for an object that China identified yesterday as being 22 metres long and 13 metres wide.

The object was spotted about 120 kilometres south-west of two possible objects seen on satellite images taken on March 16 and announced by the Australian Government on Thursday.

The Chinese satellite images were taken on March 18 by the high-definition Earth observation satellite Gaofen-1.

Eight aircraft were involved in Sunday's search over the southern Indian Ocean.

The Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Success is also in the search area, which has been extended to cover 59,000 square kilometres.

On Saturday, a civilian plane reported sighting a number of small objects close together in the search zone.

A P3 Orion aircraft flew over the area but could see nothing but seaweed.

The Orion dropped a marker buoy to track movement of the material and a merchant ship has been sent to locate and identify it.

Speaking from Papua New Guinea yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said one of the objects is reported to have been a wooden pallet.

"Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen," he said.

Malaysia has enlisted 25 other countries to help hunt for the plane.

ABC/wires

Topics: air-and-space, disasters-and-accidents, accidents, malaysia, france

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