Canberra/Kuala Lumpur:Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced Monday that two new objects that could be debris of the missing Malaysian airliner have been spotted by searchers in the southern Indian Ocean area.
“The crew on board the Orion reported seeing two objects, the first a grey or green circular object and the second an orange rectangular object,” Abbott said while addressing parliament.
The new objects were different from those spotted by a Chinese search aircraft earlier Monday in the area 2,500 km southwest of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, the prime minister said, Xinhua reported.
Malaysia’s acting Transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a press conference that the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Success was in the vicinity and it was possible that the objects could be retrieved “within the next few hours, or by tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at the latest.”
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight March 8.
The Boeing 777-200ER was initially presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea. The plane was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. the same day. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.
Contact with the plane was lost along with its radar signal at 1.40 a.m. when it was flying over the air traffic control area of Ho Chi Minh City.
In its latest update Monday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said that objects have been located by a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion.
“HMAS Success is on scene and is attempting to locate the objects in the search for missing Malaysia aircraft flight MH370,” it said, adding that the objects were spotted by the RAAF Orion around 2.45 p.m.
AMSA reiterated Prime Minister Abbot’s statement that the objects identified by the RAAF Orion were separate from the objects reported by the Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 to AMSA earlier in the day.
“The US Navy P8 Poseidon aircraft sought to relocate the objects reported by the Chinese aircraft but were unable to do so,” the AMSA said.
“The US Navy P8 remains in the search area, while a second RAAF P3 and a Japanese P3 are en route to their assigned search areas.”
According to the AMSA, the last of these aircraft will depart the search area around 11 p.m.
According to an earlier Xinhua report from Beijing, the crew of one of the two Chinese IL-76 aircraft tasked for Monday’s operations spotted some suspicious objects in the search area.
The crew reported the coordinates to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which later said via Twitter that “attempts will be made” to search the area.
A Xinhua correspondent aboard the aircraft said the searchers saw two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered over a radius of several km.
He added that as the two Chinese planes were heading back, the crew asked the Australians to send in other planes to the area for further examination.
The airborne searchers also relayed the information to Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, which had left Perth on Friday on the search mission. The vessel is expected to arrive in the area early Tuesday.
AMSA, in an earlier update Monday, while reiterating it was a “challenging search operation”, said in a statement: “AMSA is using all satellite imagery and information available in its search area development.”
Civil aircraft engaged by AMSA and military aircraft from Australia, New Zealand, the US, China and Japan were all assisting in the ongoing search operation to provide the best chance of locating objects captured by satellite imagery with the naked eye, it said.
It said it has tasked 10 aircraft Monday to search for possible objects in the search that has been split into two areas within the same proximity, covering a cumulative 68,500 sq km.