Search for Germanwings A320 crash bodies finished

The search for body parts after last month's Germanwings A320 crash in the French Alps is over, officials announced Saturday. But it is not certain that all the bodies of the 150 victims will be returned to their families.

Public Prosecutor Brice Robin (L) and General David Galtier of the gendarmerie who a photo of the second black box from the Germanwings A320 Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier

Search teams have finished looking for body parts at the crash site, the prefecture of the Alps region where the crash took place announced on Saturday.

More than 2,000 samples were collected and 150 DNA profiles established, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said.

But there were no guarantees that all the samples belonged to the victims, he warned.

Matching the DNA to samples left when the victims were alive will take three to five weeks.

The search for personal effects was to continue.

Specialist contractors are to start clearing and decontaminating the site next week and the operation could last up to two months.

The French air-crash watchdog, BEA, on Friday said that its initial inquiries confirmed the thesis that copilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane.