French images show suspicious debris in different location

MELBOURNE -- Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said on Monday that the latest lead provided by French satellite pointed to a "different location to those released by China and Australia" previously.

The French images focus on an area about 850 km north of the current search area, which is some 2,500 km southwest of Australian port city of Perth, he told ABC radio Monday.

"That's not in the area that had been identified as the most likely place where the aircraft may have entered the sea," he said.

But he stressed "We're just, I guess, clutching at whatever little piece of information comes along to try and find a place where we might be able to concentrate the efforts," Truss said, adding the Australian-led operation to find possible debris of the Malaysian Airlines flight HM 370 was "fruitless" so far.

The MH370 jet, with 239 people onboard, vanished on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and its whereabouts remained unknown to date.

Malaysia on Sunday received new satellite images from the French authorities showing potential debris along the southern corridor the jetliner might have taken, according to a statement from the Malaysian Ministry of Transport.

The French satellite imagery was released a day after China said its satellite spotted a 22-meter-long and 13-meter-wide floating object in the southern Indian Ocean, about 120 km southwest of the objects Australia announced Thursday.

All these objects remain to be located and then checked whether they are related to flight MH370.

Truss also said that the weather in the search zone is getting worse in the coming days. Tropical Cyclone Gillian is expected to track at least 1,000 km north of the current search zone, which will probably exert adverse effects on the search effort.

"Clearly it won't be cyclonic when it gets down into the freezing waters that we're dealing with this search," Truss said, trying to downplay the bad weather news, "but certainly it could stir up less favorable weather."

Chinese planes arrive in Perth to step up search efforts	Australian air force search for flight MH370