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It may take a week or more to determine origin of debris found in Indian Ocean: French official

Xinhua, July 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

It may take a week or more for investigators to determine whether a piece of debris found earlier on Wednesday in a French island in the Indian Ocean came from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, U.S. media report quoted sources on Thursday.

According to the U.S. daily The New York Times, a French official with knowledge of the investigations, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the object, which appeared to be part of a wing torn from a jetliner, has already been crated and sealed for shipment to France.

However, the official said the shipping could take two or three days before it reaches Paris, where it would then be transported to an aviation laboratory in Toulouse for analysis. The analysis could take several more days, said the New York Times report.

So far, U.S. investigators have concluded based on photos and videos that the piece of debris, reported to be about eight feet long and three feet wide, came from a Boeing 777. Since the missing MH370 was the only Boeing 777 known to be missing, U.S. investigators believed that the debris was likely from MH370, a missing plane with 239 people on board that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China in March 2014.

Meanwhile, the U.S. TV network CNN on Wednesday quoted Boeing officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying that initial assessment of the photos of the debris led to findings which suggested that the debris is consistent in appearance with a Boeing 777's flaperon, a wing component unique to the Boeing 777.

In contrast to confidence of U.S. investigators, French authorities, which would be in charge of the investigations, appeared wary. In a statement on Thursday, the French Justice Ministry said that "at this stage, the origin of the debris is not identified." Endite