French military ships searching for the black boxes of Flight 447 have detected sounds in the Atlantic depths but they are not from the Air France plane’s flight recorders, a French official said Tuesday.

The official and French investigators denied a report on the website of the French newspaper Le Monde that French ships had picked up a signal from the black boxes.

French military ships searching in the area where the plane crashed have “heard sounds” but “the black boxes have not been detected,” said an aide to France’s minister in charge of transport, Jean-Louis-Borloo. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to be publicly named.

The French air accident investigation agency, BEA, said in a statement Tuesday that “no signals transmitted by the flight recorders’ locator beacons have been validated up to now.”

Brazilian and American officials said that as of Sunday evening no signals from the black boxes had been picked up.

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