Two bodies and debris have been found from the Air France plane which went missing over the Atlantic last Monday, the Brazilian air force has said.

The remains were taken from the water early on Saturday morning, said spokesman Jorge Amaral.

Experts on human remains are on their way to examine the find.

All 228 passengers and crew on board AF 447 are believed to have been killed when the plane disappeared during its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

"We confirm the recovery from the water debris and bodies from the Air France plane," Col Amaral said at a news conference in the northern city of Recife.

He later added that two male bodies had been found, as well as objects linked to passengers known to be on the flight, including a suitcase with a plane ticket.

A seat was also found, but there has been no confirmation that it was from the flight.

The remains were picked up some 640 km (400 miles) northeast of the islands of Fernando de Noronha, off Brazil's northern coast.

Correspondents say that much of the search effort so far has been focused on finding flight data recorders, which have sonar beacons - or "pingers" - attached to them

More mystery surrounds missing Air France jet 06 Jun 2009 Investigations have revealed that the missing Air France jet was flying with the autopilot turned off and sent numerous error messages moments before crashing. Twenty-four error messages from Flight 447 with 228 onboard passengers were received from the plane minutes before it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, the BBC reported. Meanwhile, French weather experts have ruled out the likelihood of earlier theories [disinfo] that the vanished Airbus A330 encountered turbulence, saying there was no evidence to point to an "exceptional" storm.

Probe shows autopilot off before Air France jetliner crashed 07 Jun 2009 The agency investigating the crash of Flight 447 said on Saturday that signals from the missing Air France jetliner suggest 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 the plane sent 24 failure signals in the five minutes before contact was lost, suggesting that the aircraft experienced multiple systems failures before it plunged into the sea.

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