French authorities are scaling back their search in the western Indian Ocean for pieces of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, after 10 days of patrols in the waters near the island of Réunion turned up no potential debris from the long-missing jet, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Authorities have, however, handed over some objects found on the beaches of La Réunion, a French territory off the east coast of Madagascar, to French judicial authorities for use in their investigation into Flight 370, the Réunion prefecture said in a statement on Monday.
The prefecture didn’t say whether these objects might have come from an airplane.
A section of airline wing, which investigators say is likely to be from Flight 370, was found on Réunion last month, prompting French authorities to begin scouring the waters near Réunion for other debris. Authorities say prevailing ocean currents pushed the airline part - and possibly other debris - to La Réunion, thousands of miles west of where the flight is presumed to have crashed, far off the coast of Australia.
The searches covered 10,000 square kilometers using a military plane, police boats and helicopters, the prefecture said.
“In the absence of new discoveries of potentially interesting objects for the investigation, the statistical chances of discovering debris from MH370 appear extremely low,” the statement says.