Yemenia, which is 51 per cent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 per cent owned by the Saudi Arabian government, flies to Moroni, according to flight schedules on its website. -- PHOTO: AFP
PARIS - NUMEROUS faults had been noted on the Yemenia jet that crashed on Tuesday with 153 people on board and the airline was being closely monitored by French authorities, France's transport minister said.
The airline 'was a company that was being very closely monitored' and the plane that crashed had not been flying in French air space because 'numerous faults had been noted,' Dominique Bussereau told i-tele news.
Speedboats sent to area
Interior Minister Hamid Bourhane told Reuters the army had sent small speedboats to an area between the village of Ntsaoueni and the airport.
'At the moment we don't have any information about whether there are any survivors,' he told Reuters. A medical worker in Mitsamiouli said he had been called in.
PARIS - SIXTY-six French nationals were on board the
Yemenia Airbus A310 which crashed in the Indian Ocean off the Comoros, with 153 passengers and crew on board, the French foreign minister said on Tuesday.
'I offer my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims,' said Bernard Kouchner in a statement, adding that he was sending foreign aid minister Alain Joyandet to the Comoros.
The flight started in a Paris airport on Monday when an Airbus A330-200 aircraft took off for Marseille and then on to the Yemeni capital Sanaa. There passengers changed to an Airbus A310 and departed for the Comoros via Djibouti.
The plane crashed early Tuesday off the Comoros islands.
Earlier, a hospital official said that rescuers found a child survivor of the crash.
It was not immediately clear if the child was the same survivor reported earlier in Sanaa by a Yemenia airline official.
Earlier, Yemen's civil aviation authorities said on Tuesday that some bodies had been recovered from the site of a Yemenia plane crash in the Indian Ocean off the Comoros.
The plane from Yemen with 153 people on board crashed into choppy seas as it tried to land in bad weather on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros on Tuesday, officials said.
Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the Yemenia aircraft that was carrying nationals from France and Comoros.
An official from the Yemeni state carrier said the plane had 142 passengers, including three infants, and 11 crew on board. It was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the Comoros archipelago.
'We still do not have information about the reason behind the crash or survivors,' Mr Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations told Reuters.
It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.
'Two French military aircraft have left from the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search the identified zone, and a French vessel has left Mayotte,' said Mr Hadji Madi Ali, Director-General of Moroni International Airport.
Mr Ibrahim Kassim, a representative from regional air security body Asecna, said the plane had probably come down 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) from the coast, and civilian and military boats had set off to search the rough waters. -- AFP, REUTERS
