Miracle survivor 'doing well'

2009-07-01 11:24

Moroni - A teenage girl who is the only known survivor of a Yemeni jetliner crash could barely swim but managed to hang on long enough for rescuers to find her in the ocean, her father told French radio on Wednesday.

A nurse who treated the girl said she was "doing well" in a hospital in the Comoros.

A Yemenia Airbus 310 jet carrying 153 people crashed into the Indian Ocean early on Tuesday as it attempted to land in the dark amid howling winds. A French government minister said on Wednesday the plane's black boxes - flight data and cockpit voice recorders - appear to have been found.

Kassim Bakari said he spoke with his oldest daughter, 14-year-old Baya, by phone after Tuesday's crash. Baya had left Paris on Monday night with her mother to see family in the Comoros.

"(Baya was) ejected, she found herself beside the plane," her father said, describing her as "fragile" and saying she could "barely swim".

"She's a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that," Bakari told France's RTL radio.

Said Mohammed, a nurse at El Mararouf hospital in the Comoros capital of Moroni, said the girl was doing well and doctors would release more on her condition later on Wednesday.

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, Abdilai said. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar.

'A number of faults'

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

Most of the passengers were from the Comoros, a former French colony. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

Turbulence was believed to be a factor in the crash, Yemen's embassy in Washington said.

Alain Joyandet, the French minister for co-operation, told i-Tele television that "it appears that the black boxes of the plane have been recovered". Joyandet gave no other details about the recorders, which could provide key clues as to what happened.

The tragedy - and dwindling hopes that anyone else made it out alive - prompted an outcry in Comoros, where residents have long complained of a lack of seat belts on Yemenia flights and planes so overcrowded that passengers had to stand in the aisles.

The Comoros, a former French colony of 700 000 people, is an archipelago of three main islands situated 2900km south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.

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 14.4km north of the Comoran coast and 34km from the Moroni airport. Searchers encountered an oil slick at the site, the Yemeni Embassy statement said.

French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" in the plane's equipment during a 2007 inspection, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said.

European Union 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 now 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 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999. Airbus was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros to help in the investigation.

- AP