Investigators believe debris came from MH370

Authorities had found a part of the engine cowling and a panel from the main cabin, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Thursday.

The engine cowling was first discovered by an archeologist walking along the coast in South Africa, while a tourist spotted the cabin laminate on Rodrigues Island off Mauritius. The cowling still carried a partial Rolls-Royce logo.

Both parts came from a Boeing 777 and had features typical of Malaysia Airlines planes.

"As such, the team has confirmed that both pieces of debris from South Africa and Rodrigues Island are almost certainly from MH370," Liow said.

The latest discovery brings the number of retrieved plane pieces to five, all of them found in different spots around the Indian Ocean.

Searching in the dark

Flight MH370 disappeared over two years ago while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. The incident triggered a massive search operation by the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China, but even the combined forces of the three countries have failed to locate the wreckage.

In addition, the authorities have yet to discover the exact place of the crash or the reasons for it. Some experts believe that systems that would help track the plane were deliberately turned off before the crash.

The most important information would be stored in the flight data recorders, presumably still in the elusive wreckage. So far, search crews have swept more than 105,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of the Indian Ocean.

"The governments of Malaysia, Australia and China continue to be wholly committed to the search for MH370," Liow said Thursday.

However, the search is likely to be abandoned by the end of June if the current search zone of 120,000 square kilometers yields no results.

dj/sms (AP, AFP, dpa)