In Jetliner Hunt, Australian Team Spots More Objects

CANBERRA: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that two new objects that could be debris of the missing Malaysian airliner have been spotted by searchers in the southern Indian Ocean area.

"The crew on board the Orion reported seeing two objects, the first a grey or green circular object and the second an orange rectangular object," Abbott said while addressing parliament.

The new objects were different from those spotted by a Chinese search aircraft earlier Monday in the area 2,500 km southwest of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, the prime minister said, Xinhua reported.

Malaysia's acting Transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a press conference that the Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Success was in the vicinity and it was possible that the objects could be retrieved "within the next few hours at the latest."

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight March 8.

The Boeing 777-200ER was initially presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea. The plane was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. the same day. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

Contact with the plane was lost along with its radar signal at 1.40 a.m. when it was flying over the air traffic control area of Ho Chi Minh City.

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