KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia's government said Thursday two more pieces of debris, discovered in South Africa and Rodrigues Island off Mauritius, are "almost certainly" from Flight 370, bringing the total number of pieces believed to have come from the missing Malaysian jet to five.
The aircraft mysteriously disappeared more than two years ago with 239 people on board, and so far, an extensive underwater search of a vast area of the Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast has turned up empty.
Though the discovery of the debris has bolstered authorities' assertion the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, none of the parts thus far has yielded any clues into exactly where and why the aircraft crashed. Those elusive answers lie with the flight-data recorders, or black boxes, which may never be found, said Geoff Dell, a specialist in accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia.
The two newly identified pieces of debris were found in March. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said one is an engine cowling piece with a partial Rolls-Royce logo, and the other is an interior panel piece from an aircraft cabin -- the first interior part found from the missing plane.
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