The aircraft wing fragment found on Reunion Island last week belongs to the missing MH370 plane, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed on Wednesday.

Experts at an aeronautical test centre near Toulouse in France had been examining the debris that had been washed ashore on the remote French territory in the Indian Ocean. It is the first sign of the aircraft since the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 carrying 239 people went missing in March last year, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370,” Najib Razak said at a news conference.

'We now have physical evidence that, as I announced on 24th March last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the southern Indian Ocean," he said.

Malaysia Airlines said it has informed the families and friends of passengers and crew of MH370.

“We expect and hope that there would be more objects to be found which would be able to help resolve this mystery,” the company said in a statement.

The two-metre-long wing component is the only piece of wreckage recovered from the plane so far. 

A multinational search in the Indian Ocean as well as off the west coast of Australia, where it is presumed to have crashed, has found no trace of the missing aircraft.

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