SEPANG, March 22 — Acting transport minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said today he has been notified of a discovery, made by a Chinese satellite, which may be part of the missing Malaysian airliner.

“The Chinese ambassador sent a note that the Chinese satellite images found an object somewhere on the southern corridor,” he told reporters at a daily press briefing today.

The minister told reporters that the object was 22 metres long and 30 metres wide but a subsequent statement from his office corrected the dimensions to 22.5 metres by 13 metres.

“This information was received by phone during the press conference, and was initially misheard,” the statement said, explaining Hishammuddin’s mistake.

Beijing is expected to make an announcement about the finding soon.

Hishammuddin gave no other details and could not say if it was the same object spotted by Australia on Thursday.

When pressed for details, he displayed the single sheet of paper he had received in the middle of the media briefing.

“This is all I have. If you let me end this soon, I can go and check on this lead,” he told reporters.

On Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced in its Parliament that satellite images, examined by its Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, found two objects — with the larger measuring 24 metres and the smaller 5 metres — on a remote southern patch of the Indian Ocean.

Five aircraft and two merchant ships are currently scouring the remote location approximately 2,500km southwest of from the coastline of Perth.

While both the satellite sightings have indicated of possible debris on the southern corridor, Hishammuddin said, searches will also continue in the northern corridor.

“China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have verbally informed the search and rescue operation that, based on preliminary analysis, there have been no sightings of the aircraft on their radar,” he added.

Malaysia Airlines’ flight MH370 disappeared off civilian air traffic control screens without issuing a distress call at 1.22am on March 8 about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Kota Baru, in the South China Sea.

After a week’s search in the South China Sea, investigators revealed that the Beijing-bound plane was veered off its route and was piloted until 8.11am, fuelling speculation that the jetliner ferrying 239 passengers, was hijacked.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said on March 15 that the plane’s final communication with a satellite placed it somewhere in one of two corridors: a northern arc stretching from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia and into the vast southern Indian Ocean.