Debris found in Mozambique is “almost certainly” from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the Australian government has confirmed, fuelling belief that the remains of the plane will be found in the coming months.
Darren Chester, the minister for infrastructure and transport, said in a statement on Thursday analysis has found that the two pieces of debris – separate discoveries in Mozambique in the past four months – is “highly likely to have come from MH370”.
Blaine Alan Gibson, an American lawyer who has given over much of the past year to his independent search for the plane, found a metre-long piece of metal washed up on a sand bank in Mozambique on 27 February.
Coverage of his find led South African teenager Liam Lotter to come forward with the similar item he found on a beach while on vacation in southern Mozambique in late December.
The pieces arrived in Canberra on 20 March for examination by investigators from Australia and Malaysia, along with specialists from Boeing, Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University.
The analysis found both pieces to be consistent with panels from a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft.
Prior to this announcement, only a wing part recovered from a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion had been confirmed as coming from the missing craft.
Chester said confirmation fuelled confidence in modelling used by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in charge of the search for the plane to inform its 120,000 sq km search area.
“That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with drift modelling performed by CSIRO and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean.
“The search for MH370 continues. There are 25,000 sq km of the underwater search area still to be searched. We are focused on completing this task and remain hopeful the aircraft will be found.”
The Malaysian Ministry of Transport has also confirmed it advised Australian authorities that the paint and stencilling on the debris matched those used by Malaysia Airlines and are “almost certainly from MH370”.
MOT says The paint and stencilling on both parts found in Mozambique match those used by Malaysia Airlines pic.twitter.com/wNrRkePS2B
— Melissa Goh (@MelGohCNA) March 24, 2016
Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), meanwhile, said Malaysia was working with South African officials to arrange for the examination of another piece of debris “suspected to be the cowling from an engine”.
South African authorities said on Tuesday that the fragment was picked up near Mossel Bay, a small town in Western Cape province.
Mossel Bay is more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) from Vilankulo, the Mozambican resort where one of the pieces being examined in Australia was found.
MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 during a Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight with 239 passengers and crew on board.
Australia is leading the search for the missing passenger jet in the southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft was believed to have crashed after diverting from its route.
More than 95,000 sq km (36,700 sq miles) of the 120,000 square kilometre target zone has been searched so far, with investigators due to wrap up the hunt in June-July if the plane is not found.
But on the two-year anniversary of the plane’s disappearance, Martin Dolan, the head of the ATSB, told Guardian Australia he was confident the craft was in the area yet to be searched.
For the second time a “towfish” – an underwater sonar vehicle pulled behind a search ship – had been lost to the ocean floor during the search. Options to recover it are being considered.
The towfish was lost on 21 March after a tow cable connecting it to the Dong Hai Jiu 101 search ship failed, the JACC said.
The Chinese-flagged ship is en route to Western Australia’s Fremantle port while a team assesses recovery options for the sonar device.
Another towfish was temporarily lost in January after it crashed into a 2,200 metre mud volcano.