Seventeen bodies have been recovered from last week’s crash of an Air France jetliner off the South American coast, according to Brazil’s military.

The Brazilian navy and air force say they found nine bodies in the Atlantic Ocean, where the Airbus A330-200 went down. The crew of a French vessel taking part in the search has found eight, military officials told reporters Sunday evening.

Air France 447 disappeared over the Atlantic early Monday. The jet was en route to Paris, France, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with 228 passengers and crew aboard.

The bodies were found floating about 700 miles from the Brazilian coast. Items found in the same area Saturday were confirmed to have come from the jet, including pieces of the aircraft’s wing section, luggage and a leather briefcase containing an airplane ticket with a reservation code for the doomed flight.

The exact location of the crash has not been determined, since ocean currents likely caused the bodies and debris to drift in the six days since the crash. And two key pieces of evidence — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — remain missing, and could lay on the ocean floor.

The part of the ocean where the debris and bodies have been found ranges between 19,685 and 26,247 feet deep. The search area covers 77,220 square miles, an area nearly as big as the country of Romania.

Fourteen aircraft — 12 Brazilian and two French — were participating in the recovery efforts, along with five Brazilian ships and one French frigate. In Washington, a U.S. defense official told CNN the U.S. Navy will contribute two high-tech acoustic devices to listen for emergency beacons still operating in deep water.

The “towed pinger locators” help search for emergency beacons on downed aircraft to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet, and will be placed aboard two French tugs that are part of the search efforts, the official said.

Recovery of bodies and debris is significant not only for families, but for crash investigators, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Even if they don’t find anything else they can get some very important clues from the pieces that they do find and from the human remains,” Schiavo told CNN.

She said investigators would be able to discern if there was an explosion from possible residue on the bodies or other items. Or, if water is found in the lungs of victims, investigators would know the plane went down intact, she said.

(Source: CNN)