Yemeni plane crashes off Comoros, 150 on board

SAN'A, Yemen - A passenger jet carrying 153 people crashed into the Indian Ocean in bad weather early Tuesday while trying to land at the island nation of Comoros. Officials said one child was plucked alive from the sea.

The Airbus 310 operated by Yemenia was flying the last leg of a journey taking passengers from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen. Most of the passengers were from Comoros, returning from Paris. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

The rescued child was 5 years old and the flight also carried at least three babies, Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said. He said the flight data recorder had not been found.

A Yemeni aviation official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on the plane.

'Strong wind and high seas'
Reuters reported that five bodies were retrieved along with debris from the plane.

Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for operations at airline Yemenia, told Reuters that "weather conditions were rough" at the time of the crash with "strong wind and high seas" reported.

"The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61 kph (38 mph)," al-Sumairi said.

The Comoros is an archipelago of three main islands situated about 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.

Gen. Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, the senior commander for French forces in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep waters about 9 miles north of the Comoran coast and 21 miles from the Moroni airport.

French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" during a 2007 inspection of the plane that went down, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said on i-Tele television Tuesday. He said the jet had not flown to France since.

An Airbus statement said the plane that crashed went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999. Airbus said it was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros.

The A310-300 is a twin-engine widebody jet that can seat up to 220 passengers. There are 214 A310s in service worldwide with 41 operators.

Christophe Prazuck, French military spokesman, said a patrol boat and reconnaissance ship were being sent to the crash site as well a military transport plane. The French were sending divers as well as medical personnel, he said.

According to Paris Airports press service, 67 of the passengers on board the Airbus 310 had flown from France on Monday on an Airbus 330.

Most of them were from the French city of Marseille, which has a large Comoros community and where the plane briefly landed to pick up more crew and passengers.