DPA

Rio de Janeiro, Jun 17: Seven more bodies were recovered Tuesday from the sea from the Air France plane crash earlier this month, bringing the total of bodies recovered up to 50, a Navy spokesman said.

Six bodies were recovered by a French ship off Brazil's northeastern coast and one by the Brazilian Navy.

Brazilian Navy and Civil Aviation authorities said Tuesday that the bodies would later be taken to Recife, on the Brazilian mainland, for identification. The victims were among 228 people travelling on board the plane when it crashed in the early hours of June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Most of the recovered bodies had already been taken to Recife for identification. The authorities have obtained hair, saliva and blood samples from relatives of people travelling on the plane.

Brazilian authorities said the search would continue as long as bodies continued to be found. However, the chances of finding bodies decreases by the day, they said.

The Airbus' flight recorders had not been found. They will continue to transmit signals until June 30, and if they are not found there is almost no chance of establishing the cause of the accident, experts say.

The wreckage of the plane is believed to be more than 3,000 metre below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.