15 More Bodies Recovered From Air France Crash Debris

RECIFE, Brazil, June 7 -- Search ships methodically worked through a "sea of debris" from a doomed Air France jet Sunday, recovering 15 more bodies near the spot where the Airbus A330-200 is believed to have gone down a week ago.

Brazilian and French ships moved to the area Sunday afternoon after pilots participating in a grid search reported additional sightings. The bodies have been found in an area about 45 miles from where the jet sent out messages signaling electrical failures and loss of cabin pressure.

"We're navigating through a sea of debris," Brazilian Navy Capt. Giucemar Tabosa Cardoso said.

Brazil's military is withholding information about bodies or debris that have not been taken aboard ships, after sea trash was mistaken last week for a cargo pallet from the plane, prompting criticism.

Flight 447 disappeared and probably broke up in midair in turbulent weather May 31. The flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris carried 228 people -- all presumed dead.

The investigation is increasingly focused on whether external instruments on the aircraft might have iced over, confusing speed sensors and leading computers to set the plane's speed too fast or too slow -- a potentially deadly mistake.

The French agency investigating the disaster said airspeed instruments on the plane had not been replaced as the maker had recommended, but cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions about what role that might have played in the crash.

The agency, BEA, said the plane received inconsistent airspeed readings from different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm.

In Brazil, Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz said nine bodies have been recovered by Brazilian authorities: those of four men and four women and one that was impossible to identify by sex. He said he did not have information about the sexes of the eight bodies recovered by French military helicopters, which were transferred to a French ship.

Brazilian investigators are searching a zone of several hundred square miles roughly 400 miles northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast.

Munhoz and Cardoso declined to comment on the condition of the recovered bodies, saying the information would be too emotionally painful for relatives.