.One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemenia jet which crashed off the Comoros has been located, a French official says.
Efforts to retrieve the recorder will begin later today, the official added, quoted by the news agency.
A Yemenia-run Airbus A310-300 carrying 153 people plunged into the Indian Ocean close to the Comoros islands on Tuesday.
“The black box’s signal was located yesterday at 4:30pm local time by an aerial patrol, 40 kilometres from Grande Comore,” a spokeswoman for Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said.
French and US aircraft have now joined the hunt for possible survivors.
One survivor – a 14-year-old Franco-Comoran girl – was plucked alive from a sea of debris and dead bodies.
The airliner went down as it came in to land at Moroni, the Comoran capital.
“Up to now we haven’t found any other survivors, but we haven’t given up hope,” Comoran vice-president Idi Nadhoim said.
The survivor from the doomed flight, identified as Bakari Bahia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone.
It was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.
“Her health is not in danger.
She was picked up during rescue efforts on Tuesday.
Sixty-six French nationals were aboard the flight, Paris officials said. She is very calm given the shock she suffered,” local surgeon Ben Imani told at Moroni’s El Marouf hospital.
Comoran officials said France had sent a plane, and was also moving two ships into the area while the United States had sent a helicopter to help, and a plane with supplies.
Though a full list has not yet been published, a Yemeni official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on board.
The crashed plane was the second Airbus to plunge into the sea within a month.
With a population of about 800,000, the formerly French-ruled Comoros archipelago comprises three islands off mainland east Africa and just north-west of Madagascar.
– AFP/
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An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1
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AFP – Prosecutors called Tuesday for a life sentence for the leader of a Paris gang known as The Barbarians accused of the kidnap, torture and murder of a young Jewish man.
The call came as the two-month trial wound down of gang leader Youssouf Fofana who admittted in court to carrying out the crime that shocked France for its sheer brutality.
He called for sentences ranging from five to 13 years for several others of Fofana’s 26 alleged accomplices.
Prosecutor Philippe Bilger called for 20-year sentences for two of Fofana’s alleged closest accomplices in the crime committed in February 2006, and for 12 years for a young woman allegedly used to lure the victim to his doom.
Ilan Halimi was kidnapped and subjected to torture for 24 days before he was found naked and handcuffed to a tree near a railway track on February 13, 2006.
The court’s verdict is due on July 11.
anti-Semitism – justice – Paris
. He died on the way to hospital
.Rescuers have found a five-year-old child alive among the wreckage of a plane that crashed off the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros.
There is no sign of any other survivors among the 153 people on board.
The child has been taken to shore in the Comoros Islands after being rescued from the site where a Yemenia Airbus A310-300 crashed into the sea. .
Officials are yet to confirm the child’s sex or nationality.
It came down in bad weather in the early hours of the morning about 20 kilometres off the north of Grande Comore island.
There were 142 passengers and 11 crew on on Flight IY 626 which was flying from Yemen and was attempting to land on the Comoros Islands.
It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus has crashed into the ocean.
The long gruelling Flight IY 626 had started in Paris early Monday and made stops in Marseille, Sanaa and Djibouti before heading to the Comoros capital, Moroni.
This time French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.
French civil aviation officials said 66 passengers were French.
Moroni international airport control tower lost contact with the jet just before it was due to land amid bad weather, airport director Hadji Mmadi Ali said.
It is believed nationals from Canada, Comoros, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories and Yemen were also on the plane. Three small babies were also among the passengers, officials said.
Two female Moroccans, two Ethiopian women and one Filipina were among the crew members.
Two female Moroccans, two Ethiopian women and one Filipina were among the crew members.
“Bodies were seen floating on the surface of the water and a fuel slick was also spotted about 16 or 17 nautical miles from Moroni,” senior Yemeni civil aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader said.
France sent two navy ships and a plane from its close toby Indian Ocean territories to help the rescue efforts.
“Weather conditions were bad,” he said.
Mr Kader said the wind was blowing in gusts of up to 115 kilometres an hour when the disaster happened.”
The Yemenia flight left Sanaa at 9:45pm (local time) on Monday and contact was lost at 1:51am (local time) on Tuesday, Mr Kader said. “The sea was rough.
No cause has yet been announced for the Air France disaster.
Airbus, which is still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330-320 into the Atlantic on June 1 with 228 people on board, set up a crisis cell straight away and sent investigators to the Comoros.
– Faults noted –
The European plane maker said the jet which crashed off Moroni was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999. The black box flight recorders have yet to be found and their signal is due to stop emitting on Thursday.
“The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC [French civil aviation authority] and a certain number of faults had been noted,” Mr Bussereau said.
“The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC [French civil aviation authority] and a certain number of faults had been noted,” Mr Bussereau said.
“The plane had not since then reappeared in our country.”
Yemenia was not on an EU airline blacklist “but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to soon be heard by the security committee of the European Union”, he said.
Airbus said in a statement the jet had accumulated approximately 51,900 hours in the air from some 17,300 flights.
However, Yemen’s transport minister said the aircraft had undergone a thorough inspection in May under Airbus supervision.
“It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen … with experts from Airbus,” Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer said. “It was in line with international standards.”
– Airline’s history –
Yemen Airways was founded in 1961 before the formation in 1978 of Yemenia, which is 51 per cent owned by the Yemeni Government and 49 per cent by Saudi Arabia, according to its website.
The Yemenia flight started at Paris Charles de Gaulle on Monday morning, using a more modern Airbus A330-200 for the first legs of the journey.
The plane flew to Marseille in southern France, where there is a large Comoran community, and then went on to Sanaa.
There were about 100 passengers on board when it left Marseille, Yemeni civil aviation official Kader said.
In the Yemen capital, people from various Arab states joined the flight and the passengers changed to the Airbus A310 which first flew to Djibouti.
A crisis task force was set up at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport while psychologists were on hand at Marseille’s airport to comfort the families of passengers on the plane.
– ABC/AFP/
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AFP – France’s far-right National Front party was Monday in pole position to take its first town council in more than a decade after winning the first round of voting in Henin-Beaumont.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party list took 39 percent of the vote Sunday in the northern town, far ahead of a left-wing list on 20 percent. The second round of the by-election takes place next Sunday.6 million dollars), nepotism and other offences.
The town has had no mayor since April after the incumbent Socialist was charged with embezzling four million euros (5. .
Le Pen’s daughter Marine Le Pen was number two on the party’s list in Henin-Beaumont.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has several past convictions for racism and anti-semitism, shocked Europe in 2002 by coming in second in the French presidential election.
France – Jean-Marie Le Pen – National Front party