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Lucy Perkins, NPR

Experts confirm wing fragment is from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370

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Police carry a wing fragment from the coast of Reunion island in the Indian Ocean. It was sent to France for tests.
Police carry a wing fragment from the coast of Reunion island in the Indian Ocean. It was sent to France for tests.
Yannick Pitou

Updated at 3:15 p.m. ET

Our Newscast unit reports that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced at a news conference Wednesday that pieces of a jet have been identified:

"Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion island is indeed from MH370," he said.

"We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on 24th March last year, Flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

France24 reports that deputy Paris prosecutor supports the Malaysian prime minister's statement:

" 'Based on the preliminary findings, we can say at this point that there is very strong reason to believe that the wing-part which washed up on a beach on Reunion Island on July 29 does belong to the Boeing 777 flight flown by Malaysia Airlines which went down on March 8, 2014,' Deputy Paris prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said.

"Although stressing that additional testing would be required, he said the conclusion was based on technical information and analysis provided by both aircraft maker Boeing and Malaysia Airlines."

Investigators will analyze the wing fragment's metal "with high-powered microscopes to probe what caused the plane to go down," The Associated Press reports.

The Boeing 777 plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard.

Here's Razak's full statement:

Our original post continues

Experts have determined that the wing fragment found on an island in the Indian Ocean is from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The fragment washed ashore on the French island of Reunion and was taken to France for testing.

As we've previously reported on The Two-Way, the airline said that MH370 "is believed to be the only 777 to have crashed south of the equator since the jet came into service 20 years ago." Read more about Flight MH370 here. Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.