The Brazilian Navy announced on Tuesday that the body of another occupant of the Air France Flight 447 has been found, raising the total number of rescued bodies to 50.

The search teams were having difficulties finding more bodies, and none had been spotted by the Brazilian Air Force planes in the past four days. The search area, which is re-calculated daily by the Navy and Air Force, already surpasses 19 square kilometers.

The body spotted on Tuesday was rescued by the Brazilian Navy Corvette Caboclo, and will soon be taken to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the search teams' base of operations. Six other bodies, which had been rescued by a French ship, were transported to the archipelago earlier in the day.

All the rescued bodies are undergoing the preliminary identification works in the archipelago, and are later taken to Recife, where they will be identified through fingerprinting and DNA comparison. So far, none of the bodies has been identified.

According to the Brazilian authorities, the search efforts will continue.

The Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean two weeks ago, during a Rio-Paris flight. The plane carried 228 people, among crew and passengers, including eight children.

(Xinhua News Agency June 17, 2009)