An airliner with 153 people on board and belonging to Yemen's state carrier, Yemenia Air, crashed in the Indian Ocean, apparently near the archipelago of Comoros, early Tuesday morning, according to a senior government official and a Yemenia Air official, Reuters reported.
"We don't know if there are any survivors," Idi Nadhoim, vice president of Comoros, said from the airport at Moroni, the capital of the main island, Grande Comore. Mr. Nadhoim said the accident occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, but he could not provide more details.
The airline said the plane, an Airbus 310, was carrying 142 passengers and 11 crew members.
The location of the crash was not immediately known, but a medical worker in the town of Mitsamiouli, on Grande Comore, said he had been called into the local hospital.
"They have just called me to come to the hospital," he said. "They said a plane had crashed."
A Comoran police official said the plane was believed to have gone down in the ocean. "We really have no sea rescue capabilities," he said.
Comoros is 190 miles northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the mainland of Africa.