1st LD Writethru: Malaysian official says debris found in Mozambique possibly belongs to Boeing 777

Early reports show "high possibility" that the debris found in Mozambique belongs to a Boeing 777, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Wednesday.

However, Liow said "it is yet to be confirmed and verified", as Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation is working with its Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris.

"I urged everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to (the missing) MH370 at this time," he said via twitter.

Foreign media quoted U.S. officials as saying that a plane wreckage, likely to be from a Boeing 777, was found wash ashore to the coast of Mozambique.

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER, disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with a total of 239 passengers on board, most of them Chinese nationals.

Joint search efforts in the Southern Indian Ocean, where the flight was presumably had ended its journey, has yielded no concrete result so far.

Last year, an aircraft flaperon was found on the island of La Reunion, which lies at the same corner of the Indian Ocean as Mozambique.

The flaperon was so far the only found debris confirmed to be from the missing plane. Enditem