Search on for Yemeni plane crash survivors; child rescued (Third Lead)

JOHANNESBURG/SANAA - A five year-old child was being brought ashore Tuesday, after surviving a Yemen Airways plane crash near the Comoros Islands, officials said.

Abdillah Mougni, secretary-general of Comoros republic’s transport ministry, said the child, whose gender he did not know, was being brought to shore by boat.

Mougni also said only one body had been recovered from the water so far, although three bodies had been seen floating in the water from helicopters.

The Comoros islands are located between Madagascar and Mozambique, off south-eastern Africa.

The Airbus A310, which was carrying 153 people including 11 crew members, crashed between 15 and 20 km off the north of Grande Comore island early Tuesday morning. It had been scheduled to land at Moroni airport.

The flight had originated in Paris, with stops in Marseille, the Yemeni capital Sanaa and Djibouti.

Sixty-six of the passengers were French. The rest were believed to be mostly Comorans.

Comoran rescue vessels reached the site of the crash around noon and divers were preparing to search the water for the plane after pieces of wreckage were seen floating in the water, Mougni said.

Two French navy vessels and military transport planes are also on their way to the area.

One witness said she saw flames coming from the aircraft before it crashed, according to Comoran government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bacar.

The witness was a villager in a seaside village that the plane overflew after it failed in its first attempt to land because of gusting winds.

The crash is the second tragedy involving an Airbus plane in less than a month. On June 1, an Air France Airbus A330 travelling from Brazil to France plunged into the Atlantic with 228 people aboard. No survivors were found.

Between Paris and Yemen, the passengers travelled in an Airbus A330. In Yemen, they changed planes to the Airbus A310-300.

Fishermen saw the plane go down off the coast shortly after flight controllers lost contact with it around 1:51 a.m. (2351 GMT Monday), shortly before it was scheduled to land.

Airbus officials in France reported that the plane was 19 years old and in service to Yemenia since 1999. It had logged almost 52,000 flight hours and about 17,300 flights.

French Junior Minister for Transport Dominique Bussereau told i-tele TV news that French civil aviation authorities had kept Yemenia Airways under close surveillance and had detected “very many defects” on the aircraft.

The plane “disappeared from French skies after these defects were found,” Bussereau said.

The passengers were believed to be mostly Comorans living in France who were returning home for holidays or for weddings, known in Comoros as the “Jeviens” (I come).

Bordron said that on the provisional passenger list most of the names were “Comoran-sounding”.

France has sent two navy vessels, transport military planes and medical and other personnel, including divers, to assist the rescue from the neighbouring French department of Reunion and Mayotte, a Comoran island that is still part of France.

Meanwhile, investigation teams from Yemen Airways and the Yemen aviation authority plan to fly to Moroni today.