Developing | New possible sighting of debris at sea as China sends warships to join search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight

Photographs purporting to show debris in the sea in the area where the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lost contact have been posted on Chinese social media.

The pictures, supposedly taken by a Chinese passenger on board another MA flight from Beijing which landed safely in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday morning, shows what appears to be fragmented debris floating on waters about 90 minutes out to sea from the Malaysian capital.

The poster, whose profile information says he is a banker working for China Minsheng Bank in Beijing, wrote that he took the snaps from his window at a height of 11,000 metres, at about 6.45am on Sunday. 

While it is not immediately clear what the suspected debris consisted of, the area where the passenger said he spotted it appears to be roughly consistent with where the missing plane lost contact with aviation authorities and where ships from Malaysia and Vietnam were already searching since Saturday afternoon.

Li Jiaxiang, administrator of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a press briefing on Sunday morning that some debris had been spotted, but it was unclear whether it came from the plane.

Vietnamese authorities said they had seen nothing close to two large oil slicks they saw Saturday and said might be from the missing plane.

None of the reported possible sightings so far have been confirmed to be from the Boeing 777-200 in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam where the plane vanished from screens early Saturday morning.