Bodies Found in Air France Wreckage

CNN reports:

Bodies from an Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean nearly two years ago have been found along with the wreckage of the plane, a French government minister said Monday.

They will be brought to the surface and identified, Ecology and Transportation Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said in a news conference.

But the flight data recorders still have not been recovered, leaving investigators as puzzled as ever about why the plane dropped out of the sky in stormy weather on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people aboard.

"It's still a jigsaw puzzle," said Alain Bouillard, who will be in charge of the recovery operation. "We do not know where the recorders might be."

It is impossible to tell how many bodies remain in the wreck, he added. Only 50 bodies were recovered in previous searches, leaving 178 victims still missing.

He would not comment on the condition of the bodies, calling it "inappropriate" to discuss.

The debris is dispersed over "quite a compact area," he said.

All the wreckage will be brought to the surface and sent to France for study, said Jean-Paul Troadec, the head of the French air accident investigation agency, the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses (BEA).

"We want to know what happened in this accident, most particularly so it never happens again," he said.

Investigators announced Sunday that they had found pieces the Airbus A330-200 that disappeared while flying to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.