A team of eight Israelis has been scouring the French Alps since Monday for the remains of Eyal Baum, the Israeli who was killed in last week's Germanwings crash.

"Whatever we can find, and bring to the family for burial, is important in Jewish law, and it's important that the family knows they have a burial site to memorialise their loved one," said David Rose, a senior official in the Zaka rescue and recovery organisation, which sent the team.

He added that his organisation, which has travelled to the scene of several plane crashes, is assisting with the general search.

"We are not just looking for an Israeli person but also searching generally, and giving the benefit of Zaka experience," he said.

Zaka is famous for picking up body parts of the deceased after tragedies and preparing them for Jewish burial. And while it is normally governments and local authorities that authorise its involvement, on this occasion it was brought in by Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings.

Lufthansa asked families of the deceased if they had requests, and the Baum family asked for Zaka to be taken to the scene.

Lufthansa paid for the organisation's volunteers to fly to the Alps on Monday - on El Al - and made arrangements for them to search.

Members of the French Jewish community arranged and funded this Zaka mission.