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 early yesterday, officials said.

A doctor in the Comoros told Reuters a child had been plucked alive from the sea and was being taken to a medical centre. The manager of the international airport in Moroni said the child was five. 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.

"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 centre opened for survivors, told Reuters.

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 today.

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.

French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said faults had been detected during inspections in France in 2007 on the Yemenia A310, and that it had not flown to France since.

"The A310 in question was inspected in 2007 by the DGAC (French transport authorities) and they noticed a certain number of faults," he told the I-tele television channel. "The company was not on the black list but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee."

"The question we are asking... is whether you can collect people in a normal way on French territory and then put them in a plane that does not ensure their security. We do not want this to happen again," he said.

But Yemen's Transport Minister said the plane was thoroughly checked in May under Airbus supervision. "It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen... with experts from Airbus," Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer told Reuters from Sanaa. "It was in line with international standards."

Airbus said it was dispatching a team of investigators to the Comoros. It said the aircraft was built in 1990 and had been used by Yemenia since 1999. Its engines were built by Pratt and Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.

A Yemenia official said there were 142 passengers including three infants, and 11 crew. The plane was flying to Moroni, capital of Grande Comore, the main island of the archipelago.

"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas. The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61 kph (38 mph). There could be other factors," Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations, told Reuters.