Ocean Jet Crash Child Survivor

A toddler from a packed passenger jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago has reportedly been rescued.

Three bodies were also retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but no other survivors have been recovered so far, Comoros immigrations officer Rachida Abdullah said.

The Yemeni Airways Airbus 310 crashed with 142 passengers - including three children -and a crew of 11 Yemenis on board.

Most of the passengers were from Comoros, returning from Paris. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

Two French military planes and a French ship had left the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the passenger jet.

The flight, which began in Paris, was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the Comoros archipelago.

Yemenia spokesman Mohammad al Sumairi said: "The weather conditions were rough - strong wind and high seas.

"The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61km (38 miles) an hour. There could be other factors."

A United Nations official at the airport said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming in to land, and then lost contact with it.

Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% 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, 300km (190 miles) north west of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.

It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.

The European Union will soon propose the creation of a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.

"My idea is to propose a world blacklist similar to that in the EU," Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani.

He also said he would contact the carrier involved, Yemenia, to see what had happened in the Comoros crash.