Brazil's Air Force announced on Tuesday that the bodies of 13 more passengers aboard the ill-fated Air France Flight 447 were recovered from the sea, bringing to 41 the total bodies found.

Handout picture released on June 9, 2009 by the Brazilian Navy shows a piece of tailfin of the Air France A330 aircraft that crashed June 1 while in midflight over the Atlantic ocean, being hoisted by a Navy rescue vessel. [Xinhua]

Sixteen of those bodies have been sent to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, where technicians from Brazil's Federal Police and the Pernambuco state police have started the preliminary identification work, said Air Force Lieutenant-Brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso.

The remaining 25 bodies, already on route to Fernando de Noronha, are expected to arrive on Wednesday, Cardoso said.

The preliminary identification involves cataloguing of all personal belongings on the bodies, as well as fingerprint and DNA sample collection.

In case fingerprints and personal belongings fail to identify the bodies, a DNA comparison with samples collected from the relatives of all the flight's passengers will be conducted.

"Our biggest difficulty is the weather, which could protract the rescue work," Cardoso said.

According to Cardoso, each helicopter operation to bring any located body to the ships will take 40 minutes, and each helicopter is capable of carrying eight corpses only.

The Air Force and Navy have reaffirmed their commitment to do whatever they can to recover the bodies of all victims in the tragic air accident, which is believed to be the worst since 2001.

Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, vanished over the Atlantic Ocean during a Rio-Paris flight last week. The plane carried 228 passengers and crew members, including eight children.

Members of the Brazilian Air Force carry the body of a victim of Air France Flight 447 that went missing en route from Rio to Paris, at a base in Fernando de Noronha island June 9, 2009. [Xinhua]

(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2009)