The passengers included 153 Chinese citizens, and Li told his once-a-year press conference: “Those people’s families and friends are burning with anxiety.”
It was not immediately clear why the satellite information has only just come to light. The region is criss-crossed by busy shipping lanes and littered with debris, complicating the search.
Large oil slicks found by Vietnamese planes on Saturday yielded no trace of the Boeing 777, while previous sightings of possible wreckage proved to be false leads. READ: Malaysia jet mystery deepens as oil, debris links ruled out.
The search for the plane now encompasses both sides of peninsular Malaysia, over an area of nearly 27,000 nautical miles (more than 90,000 square kilometres) – roughly the size of Portugal – and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.
Theories about the possible cause of the disappearance range from a catastrophic technical failure to a mid-air explosion, hijacking, rogue missile strike and even pilot suicide.
The objects detected by the Chinese satellite were seen roughly 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of the location of the plane’s last reported contact roughly mid-way between the coasts of Malaysia and Vietnam.
“That would make sense if the debris were there,” said Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst.
“It is very possible that this could be it. The satellite image is what is seen at the time the debris would have drifted and/or sunk by then. It can be calculated to find where it is now.”
The objects were spread across an area on the eastern-most margin of the original search zone, with a radius of 20 kilometres (12 miles).
The new information prompted the focus of the search to swing back to the original flight path, after a shift in recent days to Malaysia’s west coast – far from the last known location.
“We will look at all areas especially the ones with concrete clues,” a spokesman for Malaysia’s civil aviation department said after the Chinese announcement.
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