BREAKING NEWS: China says it has located a large 30m-long object in the Indian Ocean on day three of the search for missing MH370
Hishammuddin Hussein said Chinese satellites had located an unknown object measuring 98ft long by 72ft wide in the remote southern Indian Ocean area where searches have been concentrated.
He made the announcement after being handed a handwritten notes during a daily press conference on updates in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines airliner.
He gave no further information, except to say that Chinese authorities would make an official announcement 'in a couple of hours'.
Chinese state media meanwhile reported that the images were taken at lunchtime on the March 18 - four days ago, and covered a site 120km to the west of where Australian satellite pictures sighted apparent debris.
Reports also stated that the debris spotted was 13m wide, not 30m as was reported by Mr Hussein, suggesting that the message had become slightly garbled in translation.
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Warrant Officer Michal Mikeska looks out of a RAAF C-130J Hercules aircraft as it flies over the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
The announcement came after the first Australian Orion aircraft to make a sortie over the target zone for missing Flight MH370 has returned without success. Flying Officer Peter Moore, the aircraft's captain, said a combination of 'less than ideal' weather and sea conditions had closed in on the flight.
He said his crew had flown through 'a thick layer of cloud from 2000 feet to 500 feet, isolate showers and sea fog above the surface'.
However, the aircraft had managed to cover 100 per cent of its planned search area, with RAAF officers manning the visual observer station on board.'However, we weren't able to find any evidence of wreckage from the missing Malaysian aircraft,' officer Moore said.
Flying Officer Peter Moore, the aircraft's captain, said a combination of 'less than ideal' weather and sea conditions had closed in on the flight
'I am not going to give up... My biggest concern is that we are not able to identify the debris, having to go back to the two corridors.'It came as Australia's acting prime minister today said his forces air and sea search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 'will continue while there's still hope'.
Warren Truss said no time limit had been placed on the operation which will continue 'indefinitely' and 'until we are absolutely satisfied further searching is futile.'
He spoke at RAAF airbase Pearce in Perth, western Australia, after meeting with sailors and airmen who have been scouring a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean where debris was spotted by satellite six days ago.
Australia, which announced the potential find and is coordinating the rescue, has cautioned the objects might be a lost shipping container or other debris and may have since sunk.
Two weeks after the Malaysian airliner carrying 239 people vanished, international teams were stepping up their search today.
Weather conditions were difficult in the area identified by Australian satellite pictures, Malaysian officials said in a press conference today, with strong currents and rough seas, and a cyclone predicted to be on the way to the area.
Searches by more than two dozen countries have so far turned up little but frustration and fresh questions about the passenger jet which disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
Six aircraft and two merchant ships were hunting for signs of the jet today.
Acting Prime Minister of Australia Warren Truss speaks to the media at the RAAF Pearce Base, where he said the search for MH370 would continue 'while there's still hope' and until officials were certain it was 'futile'
Mr Truss walks with RAAF Wing Commander James Parton and RAAF Group Captain Craig Heap: Mr Truss dismissed a suggestion the Australian Government had waited too long to act after revealing the satellite photos
'If there is new imagery that is relevant and can be released to the media, it will be,' he said.
'We know the families are anxious for information.'
Mr Truss and the operation's commander, Group Captain Craig Heap, said identifying and locating the two objects captured on satellite imagea would most likely be done qitwh the naked eye.
'It is primarily a visual search,' Mr Truss said. 'You need to be low, you need to be close.'
Captain Heap added: 'It's a very difficult search, but if there's something out there and we are on top of the area will find [it].'
Uncertainty: A Chinese woman who is a relative of a passenger carries her three-year-old daughter as she arrives at Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing
'This search is intensive, ' he said.
'We have had 15 sorties so far and no findings, but we are searching new areas because of the drift that has occurred.
'With the arrival of the Chinese fleet, with refuelling [support], it has the capability to stay in the area for a long time.'
Mr Truss dismissed a suggestion the Australian Government had waited too long to act following the discovery of the satellite images, risking the debris sinking to the ocean floor.
He said the search had been launched at the earliest possible moment 'in relation to the time of the imagery was created' and 'as soon as they were identified' the government had acted.
He defended Tony Abbott's perceived backdown from insisting the debris was MH370, to conceding a day later it could be a shipping container.
'There's a lot of debris floating around the globe continuously and containers fall off ships,' he said.
'But even if it's not a definite lead, it is a more solid lead than any other.'
Mr Truss said Australia had the capability to co-ordinate a large international flotilla and aircraft from all over the world, as more countries sent craft and crew to Perth.
Mr Hussein, Malaysia's defence minister, said yesterday searchers realised that time was running out. The 'black box' voice and data recorder only transmits an electronic signal for about 30 days before its battery dies.
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