An Airbus A310-300 from Yemen with 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals, crashed into the sea off the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros as it approached in bad weather.

A doctor in the Comoros said a child had been plucked alive from the sea and was being taken to a medical center. The manager of the international airport in Moroni at first said the child was five, but authorities announced that it is a 14-year-old girl. He said five bodies had also been found.

The Paris airports authority said 66 French nationals were aboard the plane, which was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.

A Yemeni aviation official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on the plane.

Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the plane.

"A doctor from the military hospital aboard one of the rescue boats called the Mitsamiouli hospital to tell them a child had been rescued alive," Halidi Ahmed Abdou, a doctor at a medical center opened for survivors.

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. A preliminary report on that crash is due on Thursday.

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

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