11 bodies from Air France disaster identified: officials

Eleven of the 50 bodies recovered from an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic three weeks ago have been identified by fingerprints and dental records, Brazilian officials have said.        

The bodies were identified as "10 Brazilians and one foreigner," officials in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco said in a statement yesterday.         

Five of the Brazilians were male, the other five were female and the foreigner was male, it added.         

The officials, part of a task force that also includes Brazilian police and forensic specialists conducting autopsies in the city of Recife, did not give further details about those identified.         

They said the families of the identified Brazilians have been visited personally on Friday and Saturday by police officers who broke the news.         

The embassy of the foreigner who was identified was also notified. A special morgue in Recife has received 49 of the 50 bodies recovered from the crash site 1,000 kilometers off Brazil's northeast coast. The 50th body was due to be delivered by ship today.          

There were 228 people from 32 countries on-board the airliner, which went down June 1 off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.  The cause of the disaster — the worst in Air France's history — was not known. Seventy-two French citizens, 59 Brazilians, 26 Germans and passengers from 29 other countries were on the flight.