Flight MH370 Update: Shoes, Handbags Found In Madagascar Belong To Crash Victims, Air Crash Support Group Claims

An amateur investigator has recently found 20 items — including shoes and handbags — on a beach in Madagascar that have since been handed over to the Australian Federal Police. An Australian air crash support group, which believes that the personal items may belong to passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, handed over the items to the AFP.

Sheryl Keen, who heads Air Crash Support Group Australia, said that most of the items were found by Blaine Gibson, an American lawyer turned amateur investigator, who has been probing the disappearance of the missing plane. Gibson previously found several debris pieces, of which three are likely to be from the missing jet.

The AFP said Monday they had been in contact with Keen’s support group concerning the latter's belief that the personal items belonged to crash victims.

"The Australian Federal Police has been contacted by the Air Crash Support Group Australia regarding a number of items in the groups possession,” police said Monday, according to local media.

Police said that further questions about the items should be directed to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is helping with the underwater search for the plane in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

Keen has used her support group’s website to publish photos of personal effects she believes could have belonged to passengers of Flight MH370. She also told the Daily Mail Australia that all of the items were found on the same stretch of Riake beach in Madagascar.

Keen reportedly said Gibson had handed over the items to authorities in Madagascar, believing Malaysian investigators would collect them.

“But we waited and waited and nobody turned up,” she said, following which her group took possession of the personal effects from Madagascan authorities, with a plan to hand them to Australian police.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A multimillion-dollar search for the plane has so far yielded no concrete clues as to the plane's disappearance. Authorities believe that the search of a 46,000-square mile area will be completed by February 2017.