Mozambican aviation authorities on Wednesday night confirmed the finding of a piece of an airplane off the coast of Mozambique, but considered it "premature" to relate it with a Boeing 777 aircraft.
"Up to now, there is no evidence showing that it is explicitly or implicitly a part of MH370," said Joao Abreu, the director of National Civil Aviation Institute of Mozambique.
Abreu told media that it is a composite material called honeycomb, used in aircraft structures, adding that the finding piece will now be submitted to expert analysis under normal procedures.
He said that Australian authorities responsible for the investigation of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has already been in contact with his institute.
The piece was found two days ago by local fishermen accompanying an American tourist along the coast of Vilanculos, Inhambane province, and delivered this afternoon to the institute in Maputo, said Abreu.
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER, disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with a total of 239 passengers on board, most of them Chinese nationals.
Joint search efforts in the Southern Indian Ocean, where the flight was presumably had ended its journey, has yielded no concrete results so far.
Last year, an aircraft flaperon was found on the island of La Reunion, which lies at the same corner of the Indian Ocean as Mozambique.
The flaperon was so far the only found debris confirmed to be from the missing plane.
