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Child rescued as plane with 153 crashes into sea
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-01 07:49 MORONI, Comoros: A Yemenia jet with 153 people on board crashed into the Indian Ocean yesterday as it tried to land during strong winds on the island nation of Comoros. Officials said one child was plucked alive from the sea. There was no word on other survivors. At least five bodies were recovered, authorities said. Preliminary investigation showed there were no Chinese passengers on the plane, the Foreign Ministry said. The crash comes two years after aviation officials reported faults with the aircraft, an Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a journey from Paris and Marseille to Comoros. Most of the passengers were from Comoros, a former French colony. Sixty-six on board were French nationals. The child was rescued from the water after the crash, according to Rachida Abdullah, a police immigration officer who works at the operations center in the Comoros, and Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader. Qader said the child is 5 years old and was found floating 15 km out to sea.
He said the child has been hospitalized in Comoros. He had no further details. Three bodies from the flight were retrieved, along with debris from the plane, Abdullah said. Qader said it was too early to speculate on the cause and the flight data recorder had not been found, but the wind was 40 miles per hour (61 kph) as the plane was landing in the middle of the night. "The weather was very bad ... the wind was very strong," he said, adding the windy conditions were hampering rescue efforts. The Yemenia plane was the second Airbus to crash into the sea in as many months. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean May 31, killing all 228 people on board, as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. A crisis center once again was set up at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Many passengers were from the French city of Marseille, which has a large Comoros community. Gen. Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, the senior commander for French forces in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep waters about 14.5 km north of the Comoran coast and 34 km from the Moroni airport. French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" during a 2007 inspection of the plane that went down, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said on i-Tele television Tuesday. In Brussels, EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the airline had previously met EU safety checks and was not on the bloc's blacklist. But he said a full investigation was being started amid questions why passengers were put on another jet in the Yemeni capital of San'a. An Airbus statement said the plane that crashed went into service in 1990 and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. AP (China Daily 07/01/2009 page1) |
