The objects were picked up by commercial satellite on Sunday. Search planes were dispatched on Thursday but found nothing. Ships are there or on the way, and aircraft from Australia, New Zealand and the United States resumed the search Friday, officials said.
Authorities cautioned the
objects could be something else -- shipping containers that fell off a
vessel, for instance. But they said they represent the best lead so far
in the search for the missing airliner, which vanished 13 days ago with
239 passengers and crew aboard on March 8 while en route from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Read below for the latest, and check out our full story.
24m & 5m long objects in Indian Ocean that MIGHT be linked to #MH370 . This is what they look like via satellite http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjJy0ivCUAAPBtc.jpg #CNN
"We are in the most isolated part of the world," said Australian Defense Minister David Johnston, stressing the difficulty of the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. "In fact it doesn't get, if I can be so bold, more isolated." He was speaking to Sky News in Jakarta.
She said news about the debris was enough to make her and other relatives of passengers "anxious again."
Asked about whether officials have given her enough information over the past 13 days, Bajc called Malaysia Airlines “one of the best airlines in Southeast Asia,” while adding that it’s “a relatively small company” that is “completely overwhelmed” by all the attention surrounding Flight 370.
"The lack of information from the airline is understandable,” Bajc told CNN. “It is frustrating because it’s always very after-the-fact, and then it’s really watered down.”“It’s very, very large" and therefore “pretty hard to fall over,” he said.
Magaw was asked whether such a large piece of a plane would have remained intact after a crash into the ocean.
"If it hit the water at an angle, from my understanding … it’s like hitting concrete, but it still would penetrate way down. … A piece of something like a wing … could very well either stay on the surface or come back up very quickly."
When Malaysia's acting transportation minister was discussing the radar images in the southern hemisphere today, he said a number of countries still were searching in the north. China and India are affirming that.
Even though China is sending vessels to the southern Indian Ocean, it also is looking at the "northern corridor" -- a northern route where officials say the plane could have flown, stretching to northern Thailand, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
It's widely believed that the plane is less likely to have taken the northern route. Still, China is "stepping up efforts to verify and analyze satellite and radar data concerning the vast Chinese territory covered by the northern corridor," China's Foreign Ministry said on its website Thursday, quoting spokesman Hong Lei at a press briefing in Beijing.
And, two formations of Chinese vessels have sailed to the Bay of Bengal "and the waters to the west of Indonesia," due to arrive Friday, Hong said.
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