Yemeni Air Airbus 310 With 153 Aboard Crashes in Comoros

An airliner with 153 people on board and belonging to Yemen’s state carrier, Yemenia Air, crashed in the Indian Ocean, apparently near the archipelago of Comoros, early Tuesday morning, according to a senior government official and a Yemenia Air official.

Photo: Yemeni Air Airbus 310 With 153 Aboard Crashes in Comoros

“We don’t know if there are any survivors,” Idi Nadhoim, vice president of Comoros, said from the airport at Moroni, the capital of the main island, Grande Comore. Mr. Nadhoim said the accident occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, but he could not provide more details, Moroni reports.

A desperate search for survivors was underway last night after an airliner crashed in the Indian Ocean.
A United Nations official at the airport said the control tower had received notification the plane was on its landing approach, but then lost contact with it, Times Online reports.

The Associated Press repots a Yemeni airport official saying that most of the passengers onboard the airplane, reported to be an Airbus 310, were Comoros residents returning from Paris, VOA News reports.

Commenting on this accident Ibrahim Kassim, a representative from regional air security body ASECNA, said the plane probably came down 3 to 6 miles from the coast, and civilian and military boats had been mobilized to start searching.

"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," Kassim told Reuters. "The weather is really not very favorable. The sea is very rough," FOXNews reports.