Four pieces of debris almost certainly from MH370 - Liow Tiong Lai

The test results on four pieces of debris that could belong to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, are expected to be known in less than three months.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai today said the pieces of debris found along the coastal areas of South Africa, Mozambique, Mauritius and Tanzania were components from Boeing 777.

"We believe that soon, we will know the test results...just like on the piece found in Tanzania, which took two and a half months to ascertain whether it belonged to the (missing) aircraft," he told reporters after opening the 3 on 3 Basketball Competition at Wisma MCA, here, today.

Last Friday, Liow said 22 pieces of debris had so far been found along South Africa, Mozambique, Mauritius and Tanzania.

Two were confirmed and four believed to almost certainly belong to the missing aircraft, while the rest were difficult to be identified as they have no serial numbers or other details on them.

Liow said the confirmed debris from MH370 were a flaperon found on Reunion Island in July, last year and a piece from the wing found on Pemba Island in Tanzanian waters in June, this year.

He added that the search for MH370 in the remaining search area of 10,000 sq km was expected to be completed by the year-end.

To date, the search effort has covered 110,000 sq km of area in the southern Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014 while en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, with 239 passengers and crew on board.