Missing plane: 'objects sighted'

ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Sunday (March 23) a civilian aircraft had spotted objects in the southern Indian Ocean during a search for the missing Malaysian airliner a day earlier.

"Yesterday one of our civilian search aircraft got visuals on a number of objects in a fairly small area in the overall Australian search zone, finally the search is being joined today by four additional aircraft, two Chinese aircraft and two Japanese Orions," Abbott said, shortly before leaving Papua New Guinea.

Abbott said the latest developments had provided credible leads.

"It's still too early to be definite, but obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft," he said.

On Saturday (March 22), China said it had a new satellite image of what could be some wreck