Planes hunt for Comoros crash black box

By Ahmed Ali Amir

MORONI (Reuters) - French planes hunted on Wednesday for the flight recorder from a plane that crashed into deep water off the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros.

A 14-year-old girl was plucked from the rough seas on Tuesday after clinging to wreckage through the night, but hope of finding any of the other 152 people aboard was fading.

"No bodies have been recovered by the French and American military rescue teams, nor by the Comoran army rescue boats. No body has been found since the crash," said Interior Minister Hamid Bourhane.

An official from the regional air security body ASECNA said a French naval officer taking part in the search told him the wreck was an estimated 350-500 meters (1,150 to 1,640 feet) below the surface.

The Yemenia Airbus A310-300 was coming in to land at Moroni, the Comoran capital, on the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.

The airline said the passengers were 75 Comorans and 65 French nationals along with one Palestinian and one Canadian. The crew comprised six Yemenis, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and a Filipina.

The sole survivor, a Franco-Comoran girl identified as Bakari Bahia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone. France said she would be flown to a Paris hospital.

"She signaled to a passing boat and it was able to pick her up. She really showed incredible physical and moral strength," French Cooperation Secretary Alain Joyandet told French radio.

"I COULDN'T SWIM VERY WELL"

Her father, Bakari Kassim, told French TV channel i-Tele he had contacted his daughter by telephone.

"I asked her what happened and she said: 'We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn't see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn't see anything. Daddy, I couldn't swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don't know what'."

The crashed plane was the second Airbus to plunge into the sea within a month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 228 people on board, after taking off from Brazil on June 1.

The Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the Yemenia flight was flown by an Airbus A330. In Sanaa, those passengers flying on to the Comoros changed onto a second plane, the A310 that crashed.

The cause of the crash was still unknown. State-run Yemenia said the flight recorder -- the so-called black box -- had been located, but this was denied by the French defense ministry.

"The Transall (a French search plane) picked up a signal from the Airbus' distress beacon and not the black box," a ministry spokesman said in Paris.