Comoros crash survivor home, hopes end for others

MORONI (Reuters) - The sole survivor of a Yemeni jet that plunged into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros islands was reunited with her father in France on Thursday, but rescuers said hopes of another miracle find were all but over.

Fourteen-year-old Bahia Bakari, who can barely swim, clung to floating debris for more than 12 hours before search teams spotted her in rough seas.

But rescuers have been unable to find any of the remaining 152 passengers and crew since the Yemenia Airbus A310-300 crashed in strong winds in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

"We have nothing. We have no plane, no more survivors, no bodies," Vice President Idi Nadhoim told Reuters by telephone.

American and French military aircraft scoured the crash site for a third day but failed to locate any wreckage, thought to be in waters up to 500 metres (1,600 ft) deep.

"With the time that has elapsed we have no hope of finding anyone who is still alive," Red Cross Coordinator Abdulahim Bakari said.

Local doctors, who marvelled at Bahia's escape with little more than cuts, bruises and a fractured collar bone, said she was discharged at her father's request.

Reporters said the teenager, who lost her mother in the crash, appeared groggy as she stepped off the French government jet and did not say much at the airport.

"I am torn between relief and sadness. I am happy to see my daughter but her mother did not come back," Bahia's father, Bakari Kassim, told reporters at Roissy Airport in Paris, shortly after greeting his daughter on her return from Comoros.

TRAPPED

The stricken airliner was coming in to land at Moroni, the Comoran capital, on the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.

Local rescuers suspect many of the dead remain trapped inside the sunken wreckage. An official from the regional air security body ASECNA said the French navy believed the plane was 350-500 metres below the surface.

"Everything leads us to believe that the bodies of the victims remain inside. In two days we haven't found a body, any large pieces of debris or suitcases floating on the water," said disaster centre member, Ibrahim Abdourazak.

The cause of the crash is still unknown.

The French defence ministry denied reports by the state-run airline that the flight recorder -- the so-called black box -- had been found.

President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi appealed to the international community for more help in locating the wreckage.

The airline said there were 75 Comoran passengers on board, along with 65 French nationals, one Palestinian and one Canadian. The crew was comprised of six Yemenis, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and a Filipina.