Girl pulled alive from jet wreckage

12 April 2012

A teenage girl was plucked from the sea after a Yemeni jetliner carrying 153 people crashed into the Indian Ocean as it attempted to land amid severe turbulence and howling winds.

Rescuers said the 14-year-old, whose first name is Bahia, was found floating 10 miles out to sea from the Comoros islands, off Africa's east coast where the Yemenia airlines plane was trying to land.

The crash came two years after aviation officials reported equipment faults with the plane, an aging Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a Yemenia airlines flight from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes.

Most of the passengers were from Comoros, a former French colony, and 66 on board were French nationals.

Yemen's embassy in Washington issued a statement saying five bodies were also recovered.

Rescuer Sgt Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that he rescued the girl after she was found bobbing in the water.

She couldn't grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea, he added.

There were earlier statements from officials that a 5-year-old boy survived. El-Kaei said that was not known and the airline had lost contact with its office in Comoros because of bad weather.

Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said the flight data recorder had not been found and it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. But he said winds in excess of 40 miles per hour were pummelling the plane as it was landing in darkness in the early morning hours of Tuesday. Turbulence was thought to be a factor in the crash.

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