RIO DE JANEIRO, June 3 (RIA Novosti) - The first Brazilian Navy vessel has reached the area of the Atlantic where debris has been found from an Air France plane that went missing earlier this week, a Navy spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brazil's Air Force said on Tuesday it had found fragments of the wreckage floating near the location where the plane, with 228 passengers and crew on board, last made contact in the early hours of Monday.

"A ship [the Grajau] from Brazil's Navy is in the area and has begun searching for wreckage," Admiral Savio Nogueira told Brazil's Globo News.

The debris was discovered around 650 kilometers (390 miles) north of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha archipelago. Before losing contact, Air France Flight 447 had sent an automatic signal to airline maintenance computers from the area, indicating several technical failures.

Navy sources have said that 11 aircraft are participating in the search and that the fragments are spread over a five-kilometer radius. The latest discovery is a seven-meter piece of the plane, found 90 kilometers to the south of the original wreckage sighting, believed to be either a piece of the plane's fuselage or tail.

A fuel spill stretching 20 kilometers has also been located.