Three more bodies from Air France crash found: Official

BRAZIL: The Brazilian navy recovered three more bodies from the Air France flight that crashed last week in the Atlantic, raising the total recovered so far to five, a spokesman said Sunday.

Other bodies were also spotted in the area where Air France flight AF 447 came down on June 1 as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board, the spokesman for Brazil's air force told reporters here.

Earlier, on Saturday, Brazilian search crews retrieved the first bodies from the crashed Air France flight in the Atlantic. Investigators said faulty speed readings had been found on the same type of jets.

Navy ships found the bodies of two men and debris including a blue seat with a serial number matching Air France Flight 447, a rucksack containing a vaccination card, and a briefcase with an Air France ticket inside, rescue officials said.

Brazilian air force planes and navy ships have been scouring a swathe of the Atlantic about 1,100 km (683 miles) northeast of Brazil's coast since the Airbus A330-200 plane disappeared on Monday, killing all 228 people on board.

The crash of the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris was the world's deadliest air disaster since 2001 and the worst in Air France's 75-year history.

Rescuers, who said that only family members will be informed of the identity of the corpses, believe many bodies could have sunk or been devoured by sharks.

Searchers previously had retrieved debris from the ocean that turned out to be unrelated to the crash.

French investigators trying to establish the cause of the crash said on Saturday that Airbus had detected faulty speed readings on its A330 jets before last week and had recommended that clients replace a sensor.