French investigators have confirmed 'with certainty' that a piece of plane debris found on a remote Indian Ocean island was from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared last year.
In a statement, French prosecutors said, "it is possible today to say with certainty that the flaperon discovered on Reunion island on July 29 came from flight MH370."
The piece of wing known as a flaperon was found on a Reunion beach. The debris was sent to France for analysis.
Reunion is about 2,500 miles west of the current search area.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8th last year while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
The plane was carrying 239 people.
Australia has been leading the hunt for the plane, using sonar to trawl a massive expanse of ocean some 1,000 miles off its west coast.
Malaysia has appealed to the governments of Mauritius and Madagascar, which lie to the east of Reunion, to look out for objects on their shores.
