'Bodies' found on bed of Lake Constance

STUTTGART (Reuter) - German officials investigating the ditching of a light aircraft thought to have been carrying radioactive material said they believed they had found the bodies of two missing passengers.

Two German men on board the aircraft, which crash-landed in Lake Constance on 24 January, were known by Interpol to be involved in smuggling radioactive materials from eastern Europe, leading to speculation that they had ditched the plane to fake their deaths and sneak ashore. Police believed there were three German men and two Czech women on board.

No traces of radioactive substances were found when the wreck was raised last week. But they also found no bodies and discovered that the passengers had escaped from the plane after it landed on the water.

Baden-Wurttemberg police said yesterday that a sonar survey of the lake bed had located what appeared to be two bodies on the lake floor at a depth of 160 metres.