Flight MH370: ‘Pieces Of Interest’ Found On Réunion Island By Malaysian Investigators, Report Says

A team of Malaysian investigators scouring the shoreline of Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday recovered several objects that could help authorities investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The focus of the search for the missing Boeing 777-200 reached the French island near Madagascar, in Africa, after a part from an airplane wing was found there last week.

The team -- consisting of four people -- was searching the coastline around Saint-Andre, where the flaperon belonging to a Boeing 777 plane was found last Wednesday, a Malaysian official told Channel News Asia. Several small white objects, including a wooden item, were found in the area Tuesday, and they will now be analyzed.

"We don't know what it is, they're just pieces of interest," the official, who did not want to be named, reportedly said. "We are just walking the beach looking for anything of interest, which could help in the investigation.”

Authorities are awaiting a report from France, which is leading the investigation into the flaperon’s possible link to the missing plane. Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, head of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, said Tuesday that Malaysian officials along with officials from the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA) "met with the investigating judge in a coordination meeting to discuss the inspection and verification procedures ahead of the examination scheduled for Wednesday" in Toulouse.

"Malaysia and France share the concern and anxiety of all the next-of-kin in determining the origin of the flaperon in the hope of ending the 16-month painful wait for determinative news and physical evidence of the missing aircraft flight MH370," the statement said.

A Malaysian investigator at Reunion Island urged people not to jump to conclusions until experts in Toulouse releases the report. "We don't want to raise expectations of the next-of-kin who have already gone through a lot already," the official told Channel News Asia, adding that the country's team will stay on Réunion "as long as it takes."

On Sunday, Malaysian authorities confirmed that an object found on the island that was suspected to be part of a plane door was in fact a ladder with no links to the Boeing 777. However, the flaperon -- part of a wing flap of a Boeing 777 -- has led to hopes that one of aviation's greatest mysteries may finally be solved. The search for Flight MH370, which went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has been ongoing for over a year and has become the costliest aviation search in history.