The French secret service has found that two passengers on board Air France flight AF447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean last week have names linked to Islamic terrorism.

The match was made by French agents from the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) working their way through the list of passengers on board flight AF447.

According to a source close to the investigation, the name similarities might be a macabre coincidence and French security agents are now checking dates of birth and other information to confirm the link.

Air France flight AF447 crashed four hours into an 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1st.

Little is known about the circumstances leading up to the crash, apart from 24 automatically generated technical fault reports sent by the near new Airbus A300-200 series in the last four minutes of its flight.

So far the bodies of less than 50 of the 228 passengers and crew who were on the flight have been recovered and a large air and sea search is continuing.

While French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said there is no evidence supporting a “terrorism theory,” he has also said, “we cannot discard that for now.”

Immediately following the crash of AF447, DGSE agents were sent to Brazil and it was there they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.

France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.