Child rescued

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Military personel load a Transall plane bound for Moroni, with first aid equipment at Sainte-Marie de la Reunion airbase 181, on the French island of Reunion; a man holds a relative of passengers of the Yemenia airlines

A PASSENGER jet carrying 153 people from Paris and Marseilles via Yemen to Comoros crashed into the Indian Ocean early Tuesday while trying to land on the tiny island nation of Comoros. Search teams rescued a 14-year-old girl from the sea, officials said, but there was no word on other survivors. The flight also had at least three babies, Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohamed Abdel-Qader said. Three bodies from the flight were retrieved along with debris from the plane, according to Comoros immigrations officer Rachida Abdullah.

Abdel-Qader said it was too early to speculate on the cause as only one flight data recorder had been found and had not yet been analysed. "The weather was very bad, the wind was very strong," he said. The Yemenia [Yemen Airways] plane, which went into service 19 years ago and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999, was the second Airbus to crash into the sea recently. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 31 May, killing all 228 people on board as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The 11-member crew of the Yemenia plane was made up of six Yemenis, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and a Filipino. French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his "deep emotion" about the crash and asked the French military to help in the rescue operation from the nearby French islands of Mayotte and Reunion.