Yemeni airliner crashes in Indian Ocean

Update: 8:03 a.m.

Rescuers searching the wreckage found 14-year-old girl alive in the Indian Ocean.

From ReutersAn airliner belonging to Yemeni state carrier Yemenia Air crashed in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros Tuesday with 150 on board, a senior government official said.

“We don’t know if there are any survivors among the 150 people on the plane,” Comoros vice-president Idi Nadhoim told Reuters from the airport at the main island’s capital Moroni.

Nadhoim said the accident happened in the early hours of Tuesday, but could not give any more details.

The location was not immediately known, but a medical worker in the town of Mitsamiouli, on the main island Grande Comore, said he had been called into the local hospital.

“They have just called me to come to the hospital. They said a plane had crashed,” he told Reuters.

A Comoran police source said the plane was believed to have come down in the sea. “We really have no sea rescue capabilities,” he added.

The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 190 miles northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.