Australian officials say two pieces of debris discovered along the coast of the east African nation of Mozambique are "highly likely" to have come from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner that vanished two years ago.
One of the pieces of debris, a meter-long chunk of metal, was found earlier this month on a sandbank by an American lawyer and part-time adventurer. A South African teenager discovered another fragment on a beach while on vacation with his family back in December.
A statement by Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester says analysis of the debris concludes it is "almost certainly" from Flight 370, which disappeared with 239 passengers and crew during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Aviation authorities believe Flight 370 crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mozambique. Search crews have covered nearly 100,000 square kilometers of sea floor in hopes of finding the wreckage of the Boeing 777 plane.
The first debris from Malaysia Flight 370, a part of the plane's wing known as a flaperon, washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion last July.
Authorities are also investigating a piece of debris recently discovered by an archeologist on a South African beach. The fragment appears to be from the covering of an aircraft engine and is emblazoned with the Rolls Royce logo, the British-based engine maker.
