MORONI, Comoros (AP) – A Yemeni jetliner carrying 153 people crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday as it came in for a landing on the island nation of Comoros. Yemeni officials said a teenage girl survived.
The crash came two years after aviation officials reported faults with the plane, an Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a journey from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. Most of the passengers were from Comoros, a former French colony. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.
Khaled el-Kaei, the head of Yemenia Airways' public relations office, said a 14-year-old girl survived the crash. And Yemen's embassy in Washington issued a statement saying a young girl survived and was taken to a hospital. It also said five bodies were recovered.
There were earlier reports that a five-year-old boy survived. El-Kaei said that was not known and the airline had lost contact with its office in Comoros because of bad weather.
The flight data recorder had not been found and it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. But the weather was very bad, and the windy conditions also hampered rescue efforts.
The Yemenia plane was the second Airbus to crash into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1.
The Comoros is an archipelago of three main islands situated 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar. It is a former French colony of 700,000 people.
In France, school vacations began this week and many on the plane were heading home to visit.
French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" during a 2007 inspection of the plane that went down.
In Brussels, EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said a full investigation was being started. ... more » |