Cargo flight

Two of the passengers were tested positive for Covid-19 during the routine testing at the quarantine facility in Port Vila on Sunday.

The Government’s Public Relations Officer in the Prime Minister’s Office, Fred Vurobaravu said they want to know why the passengers were allowed on the flight given New Caledonia has cases of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19.

The French overseas territory has been under a lockdown since early September, due to the worsening Covid-19 crisis.

Several uniformed officers loaded a large wooden crate into a van that drove with a police escort from the main wing of the Roland Garros airport to a separate hangar.

French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the 2 meter (6-foot) long piece of wing.

If from the Malaysia Airlines jet missing for 16 months, the wreckage could have drifted thousands of kilometers (miles) across the Indian Ocean to this French island off the east coast of Africa.