BREAKING: Debris found is from missing Malaysia Airlines plane

Over a year after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared off radar, it seems investigators are finally about to discover what happened.

Debris found last week on the French island of Reunion is indeed from the missing plane, the Malaysian Prime Minister confirmed in a press conference just now.

"The international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," PM Najib Razak told the press in Malaysia this evening.

"I hope this confirmation will bring comfort to the families of the MH370 passengers… The loss of MH370 marked us as a nation," continued in the emotional address. 

"The burden faced by the families has been unspeakable.The government of Malaysia is committed to do everything within our means to find out the truth of what happened."

French prosecutors are also set to discuss the news in a separate press conference in Toulouse shortly.

The debris – a 1.8m wing flap – was discovered by French cleaner Johnny Begue last week. The wreckage was half covered in sand and has barnacles stuck around its edges, and Mr Begue also came across battered luggage nearby his initial find. 

Aviation experts at the time said it was very similar to a component of a Boeing 777, the same model as MH370.

There is currently only one Boeing 777 missing in the world, and that is MH370, so any 777 wreckage found was very likely to have been from the tragic plane which vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A comprehensive report earlier this year into the plane's disappearance revealed that the battery of the locator beacon for the plane's flight data recorder had expired more than a year before the jet vanished. 

The Australian government, who had been leading the search for MH370, abandoned their initial air search seven weeks after the plane's disappearance. Crews then began to map parts of the Indian Ocean most likely to contain wreckage. Ships first began exploring the mapped areas last October, but this is the first sign of any debris.