Bodies found from missing plane

Also among the items recovered was a seat from the aeroplane with a serial number that matched that of the flight.

“As well as the bodies there are various remains of the aircraft,” Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz, an air force spokesman, said.

“Plane seats, part of the wing [and] various other items [were] localised.”

‘Monumental task’

The bodies were found and retrieved by a navy vessel about 1,200km off the coast of Brazil.

Gabriel Elizondo, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sao Paulo, said the long distance to the shore made the operation a “monumental task.”

“The nearest piece of land, the island of Fernando de Noronha, is 900km from where these bodies were recovered. They [the navy] have extreme problems with low visibility and with bad weather.”

“They’re ramping up their search efforts to be 24 hours non-stop, the priority being looking for and recovering bodies,” he said.

The bodies are to be taken to Fernando de Noronha and then on to Recife for identification.

Flight AF 447 disappeared from radar en route from Rio de Janiero to Paris on Monday with 228 people on board.

The cause of the crash over the mid-Atlantic is yet to be identified, although 24 automatic error messages were sent by the aircraft before the crash.

Earlier finds on Thursday had turned out not to be from the plane.

Chris Yates, an aviation analyst, told Al Jazeera that based on the messages it seems there may have been a fault with the speed sensors, but he stressed that it is only a possibility and not yet certain.

“Until we find wreckage and until we can assess that wreckage and hopefully find the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, everything is in the frame.”