Monday 17 March 2014

Yemeni plane crash: child survivor found in Indian Ocean

A young child has been plucked alive from the waters of the Indian Ocean by rescue boats searching for survivors of a Yemenia Air flight from Paris that crashed off the Comoros Islands, killing up to 152 people.

The boy, said to be a toddler, is the only known survivor so far of the passengers and crew on board the Airbus 310 aircraft that ditched in the sea after an aborted landing attempt at Moroni Airport on Grand Comore.

France's transport ministry said 66 of those on board were French citizens, inflicting a second major air disaster on the country in a little over four weeks.

Exactly a month ago an Air France Airbus 330 carrying 228 passengers and crew disappeared over the Atlantic after taking off for Paris from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

In the latest disaster, the flight had departed from Charles De Gaulle Airport for Sana'a in Yemen via Marseille. There, passengers had changed plane from an Airbus 330 to an Airbus 310 and been joined by others for the rest of the flight to the Comoros via Djibouti.

Initial blame is being put on bad weather, with air officials in the Comoros Islands reporting strong winds of 38mph, gusting to 70mph.

But Dominique Bussereau, the French transport minister, also said that the plane had been kept out of his country's airspace because "numerous faults had been noted".

Yemenia Air itself was being "very closely monitored", she said.

The airline said the plane was in good order and had been serviced recently.

The Comoros Islands are an archipelago off the coast of East Africa between Madagascar and Mozambique. They were previously a French colony, and another member of the group, Mayotte, remains a French territory.

The French nationals are believed to be mainly residents originally from the islands now living in France and returning home for the summer holidays at the end of the school year.

The largest Comorran community in France is in Marseille, where the flight picked up the majority of its passengers.

Witnesses at the airport in Moroni, Grand Comore's capital, said people waiting to meet relatives saw the plane coming into land but it veered away and turned as if to make a second approach.

It then disappeared from radar screens.

Yemenia Air's website carried a brief statement saying it regretted the loss of flight IY 626 and giving families an emergency number to ring.

Passenger lists showed that numerous families, including three babies, were on board.

The Comoros government said speed boats were sent to look for signs of wreckage immediately, helped by two French fighter jets based in Mayotte and another of the country's Indian Ocean territories, Reunion.

They spotted an oil slick around 16 miles offshore.

When the boats arrived they found a number of bodies floating in the water, and had taken three from the water when they found a toddler still alive, according to a Yemenia and local officials, quoting rescue workers.

"A child was found alive. He is now on a rescuers' boat," said Ben Imani, a doctor at Moroni's main hospital.

Sana'a airport said there were 142 passengers on board the plane, with the remainder being crew.

Christophe Prazuck, a French military spokesman, said a frigate, Nivose, and patrol boat, Rieuse, were on their way to the scene. A military transport aircraft was in addition taking a team of divers and doctors.

A crisis unit has been set up at Charles de Gaulle airport, and another in Marseilles. The Comorros consul for the south of France, Stephane Salord, said: "There is considerable dismay. These are families that, each year on the eve of summer, leave Marseille and the region to rejoin their families in the Comoros and spend their holidays."

The Air France aircraft that crashed while flying from Brazil to Paris a month ago was also an Airbus, but attention is more likely to focus on the record of Yemenia Air.

A group of Comorans in France had formed a protest group to complain about conditions on board the Air Yemenia flight on which they depended to return home.

Airbus said the plane had gone into service in 1990 and been operated by Yemenia, Yemen's national airline, since 1999. It had accumulated 51,900 flight hours.

Grand Comore is the largest of the islands, the others being Mohéli and Anjouan. Its 800,000 population makes it one of Africa's smallest countries, but also one of its most densely populated.

Yemen, which occupies the southernmost part of the Arabian peninsula, is troubled by Islamist, sectarian and tribal violence, and the authorities are still looking for a Briton and and a German family of five kidnapped there earlier this month.

However, there are no initial suspicions of terrorist involvement on this occasion.


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