Fifteen more bodies were recovered on Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean near the site where an Air France jetliner was believed to have crashed a week ago, bringing the number of bodies retrieved to 17, Brazilian military officials said.
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A handout picture from the Brazilian Air Force shows pieces of debris from the crashed Air France Airbus A330 picked out by Brazilian Navy sailors from the Atlantic Ocean, some 745 miles (1,200 km) northeast of Recife. [Xinhua]
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The 15 bodies were found in a sea area some 1,150 km off Brazil's northeastern coast city Recife, Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters in Recife.
The Brazilian military said eight bodies were picked up by a French navy ship on Sunday, but gave no further details.
Brazilian ships retrieved two corpses on Saturday and seven others on Sunday. Among the nine, Munhoz said, four were male and four female, while the gender of the other body could not be identified.
He added that the Brazilian military were transporting the 17 bodies to the islands of Fernando de Noronha, 370 km off the coast of Brazil, from where the corpses and debris would be eventually brought to Recife.
Munhoz said dozens of components of the crashed airliner were also found, noting that there is "no more doubt" that the debris is from Flight 447.
Currently, the French side is trying to find the plane's black box data and voice recorders, which could reveal the cause of the crash. The Brazilian authorities are focusing on the recovery of victims' bodies and the jetliner's wreckage.
The Air France Airbus A330 with 228 people on board vanished over the Atlantic Ocean early Monday after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris.
So far, 12 Brazilian planes, two French planes, one French ship and five Brazilian navy ships are searching the area some 1,100 km northeast of Brazil's coast.
Two French submarines, including one nuclear-powered, would arrive on Wednesday to search for the black box. The US Navy will also send two high-tech devices to French ships to help locate the black box.
The French agency investigating the crash of Flight 447 said on Saturday that signals from the missing Air France jetliner suggested that its autopilot was not on before it vanished.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, the director of France's air safety investigation agency, said at a press conference in Paris that some problems had been detected with the speed-measuring instruments on the Airbus A330. "They hadn't yet been replaced" on the plane that crashed, he added.
