A 14-year-old girl was rescued alive today from the wreckage of an airliner that crashed trying to land in the Comoros islands, police said.
The teenager was pulled from the Indian Ocean amid wreckage of the Yemeni Airbus 310.
Comoros Communications Minister Abdourahim Said Bakar said earlier reports that the rescued child was five were wrong.
"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.
Ibrahim Abdourazak, an official at a crisis centre in Comoros, said the 14-year-old girl was from a village in the centre of the Indian Ocean archipelago.
Mr Bakar also told Al Jazeera television that a 14-year-old girl had been rescued. He said he thought she was the only survivor.
Hadji Madi Ali, director of the international airport in Moroni, had earlier told national radio the child was five.
Five bodies have also been retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but no other survivors have been recovered so far.
The Airbus A310-300 crashed into choppy seas as it tried to land in bad weather on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros today. There were 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals.
Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the plane.
A Yemenia official said there were 142 passengers, including three infants, and 11 crew. The plane was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the archipelago. It had originated in Paris and had stopped in Marseille.
Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations said they did not yet know what had caused the crash.
"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas. The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61km an hour. There could be other factors," he said.
An inspection of the plane in France in 2007 noted "a certain number of faults," French Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau said in an interview with France's i-tele channel without elaborating on the problems.
The aircraft was barred from France after the inspection, and the airline was being monitored by European Union authorities, he said.
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.
In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.
"Two French military aircraft have left from the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search the identified zone, and a French vessel has left Mayotte," said Hadji Madi Ali, director General of Moroni International Airport.
France and the Comoros have enjoyed close ties since the islands' independence in 1975. The French Foreign Ministry estimates 200,000 people from Comoros live in mainland France.
Remittances from France are an important part of the islands' economy.
"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," said Kassim from ASECNA. "The weather is really not very favourable. The sea is very rough."
Agencies