Budapest - Hungarian police said Thursday that French authorities have sent two officers and equipment to help search for a 22-year-old French student who disappeared two weeks ago after leaving a city centre bar to walk home alone in the early hours.

Hungarian police assigned a seven-strong team of detectives to interview over 100 possible witnesses and review footage from surveillance cameras to reconstruct Ophelie Bretnacher's last known movements.

However, they have found no trace of the young French woman, who came to Hungary in September as an exchange student.

Video footage showed that she walked on to the Chain Bridge, a famous landmark that straddles the Danube in central Budapest, just before 3 am on December 4. That is where the the trail goes cold, as there is no evidence of Ophelie walking off the bridge.

Half an hour later, an Italian student found Ophelie's bag, with its content apparently untouched, as he was crossing the bridge.

Ophelie's parents and friends have said that she was a happy and successful young woman, and insist that she would never have taken her own life. Nevertheless, Hungarian police divers have been searching the Danube in case she somehow fell into the river.

The two French river police officers have come equipped with more sophisticated sonar equipment than anything the Hungarian authorities have access to, and are now assisting in the search, Budapest police headquarters announced on Thursday. (dpa)