Most of the passengers aboard the flight were Chinese, and around a dozen of their relatives gathered outside the Beijing offices of Malaysia Airlines, with emotions running high.
“I don’t believe this latest information about the plane, they have been lying to us from the beginning,” said Zhang Yongli, whose daughter was on the plane.
“I know my daughter is out there, but they won’t tell us the truth,” he added, waving Chinese and Communist Party flags.
The flight, with 239 people on board, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March last year, and authorities said it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
No physical evidence had been found until the debris, part of a wing known as a flaperon, washed up on the French territory of Reunion, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said early Thursday it was from the jet.