PARIS - SEARCH teams scouring the Indian Ocean coast off the Comoros on Sunday detected a signal from the black boxes of the Yemenia airliner that crashed last week with 153 people on board, investigators said.

'Investigators from the BEA have detected a signal from the flight recorders,' said Comoran lead investigator Ali Abdou Mohamed in a statement received in Paris.

'The BEA confirms that a signal from the two boxes was detected this morning during underwater searches to locate the flight recorders of Flight IY 626,' said a statement from the French BEA accident investigation agency.

Comoran investigators said the search for the black boxes was continuing with French and Yemeni armed forces taking part.

The Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 went down Tuesday in the Indian Ocean as it was approaching for landing on the Comoro Islands. A 12-year-old girl is the only survivor of the crash.

Yemenia has suspended some flights to the Comoros following the crash and has come under strong criticism over its safety standards, which it has rejected.

Passengers of the ill-fated Yemenia flight took off from Paris and stopped over in Marseille on June 29 aboard a modern Airbus A330 but they switched in Sanaa to the older A310 jet to continue to Djibouti and Moroni.

France had said a maintenance check in 2007 had revealed several problems and that the plane had not flown in French airspace since, but Yemen has rejected claims that the aircraft was unsafe. -- AFP