China's civil aviation chief said today that there was no proof that floating objects in the South China Sea seen in satellite images were connected to the missing flight MH370.

"Chinese satellites have found smoke and floating objects ... At present we cannot confirm this is related to the missing aircraft," Li Jiaxiang told reporters on the sidelines of China's annual meeting of parliament, according to Reuters .

Li said there was also no evidence the Malaysian military was concealing information about the missing flight.

Earlier, China had said that one of its satellites detected three large "floating objects" in a region of the sea where it suspected the missing Malaysia Airlines plane had an accident.

The suspected objects were found at 105.63 degrees longitude East and 6.7 degrees latitude North, the administration said on its website.

It added that the objects were spread across an area with a radius of 20 kilometres (12 miles), in sizes that appeared to be 13 x 18 metres, 14 x 19 metres and 24 x 22 metres.

 

According to previous news reports, China had deployed a total of 10 satellites for the task of locating the Boeing 777-200.

The plane, which was bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, has been missing since early Saturday morning.

There were 239 people on board MH370, of whom 154 were Chinese nationals.