An official from the state carrier Yemenia said some bodies had been recovered from the wreck. The official could not say whether there were any survivors.
- An Airbus A310-300 from Yemen with 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals, crashed into choppy seas as it tried to land in bad weather on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros on Tuesday, officials said.
- Paris Airport said there were 66 French nationals aboard.
- Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the Yemenia aircraft that was carrying nationals from France and Comoros.
- "The planes have seen debris at the supposed point of impact," Ibrahim Kassim, an official from regional air security body ASECNA, told Reuters.
- A Yemenia official said there were 142 passengers, including three infants, and 11 crew. The plane was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the archipelago.
- A United Nations official at the airport, who declined to be named, said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming into land, and then lost contact with it.
- Yemenia is 51 percent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 percent owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the company website.
- The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300 km (190 miles) northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.
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