Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said he did not want to dwell on the appearance of the two passengers, despite indicating they were black (Picture: AFP/Getty)

Two passengers thought to have boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines jet using stolen passports look like former Premier League footballer Mario Balotelli, an official has said.

A press conference in Kuala Lumpur on the latest developments on the search for flight MH370 took an unusual turn when the director-general of the country’s civil aviation department said the two men did not look Asian.

Mario Balotelli played for AC Milan in Serie A this weekend (Picture: Reuters)

When asked by assembled journalists what they did look like, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said based on CCTV footage they resembled the Italian footballer, who now plays for AC Milan.

‘Do you know Balotelli? They look like Balotelli,’ he said, without clarifying why he singled out the former Manchester City striker.


A massive search operation has been launched to locate the plane (Picture: Reuters)

The statement was greeted by laughter at the press briefing, despite the 239 people on board the Boeing 777, which disappeared on Saturday local time, all being feared dead.

Earlier it was announced by authorities in Vietnam that a yellow object spotted near where contact was lost with the plane was not a life raft as first thought.