POLICE were last night scouring missing persons' files to discover the identity of a man found in the River Tyne.

His body was spotted by workers at low tide among mud banks near Newcastle Business Park, in Scotswood Road, on Wednesday.

Marine police and firefighters lifted the body from the water.

A post-mortem examination was being carried out yesterday on the corpse, which is thought to have been in the river for several weeks.

A Northumbria Police spokesman said: "The deceased had no form of identification and was in an advanced stage of decomposition.