Asked by reporters if weather may have been the cause of the crash, French transport minister Dominique Bussereau replied that "yes, they are talking of that, but at the moment it's still a little vague."

"They are saying the plane was making its approach, that it pulled out of the approach and then tried another approach that went wrong," he told Europe 1 radio.

Bussereau also said that "numerous faults had been noted" on the Yemenia jet that crashed, and the airline was being closely monitored by French authorities. The plane that crashed had not been flying in French air space because of the faults.

"The plane crashed in the early hours of the morning several nautical miles off the Comoros islands, with 142 passengers and 11 crew aboard," an official with the Yemeni national carrier Yemenia said.

"Most of the passengers are French or from the Comoros," the official said, adding that rescue boats had been sent to the scene of the crash to hunt for possible survivors.

"Bodies were seen floating on the surface of the water and a fuel slick was also spotted about 16 or 17 nautical miles from Moroni," senior civil aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader told reporters.

"Yemenia regrets to announce the missing of its flight No IY626 from Sanaa to Moroni with 142 passengers and 11 crew onboard Airbus 310-300," was the announcement on the airline's website.

It gave two emergency contact numbers, +967-1250-800 and +967-1250-833.

There was no other information about the possible cause of the crash.

The flight started in a Paris airport Monday when an Airbus A330-200 aircraft took off for Marseille and then on to the Yemeni capital Sanaa. There passengers changed to an Airbus A310 and departed for the Comoros via Djibouti.

Search teams rush to the scene

"Rescue boats from the Comoros and Madagascar are taking part in the search operation," a Yemeni official told AFP, adding that the crash occurred about three kilometres from the coast.

An airport source in Paris, where the flight originated, said the aircraft had apparently "crashed into the sea several kilometres from the coast" as it was coming in to land in Moroni, capital of the Comoros.

It was was due to have touched down in Moroni at around 11pm GMT on Monday.

Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled al-Wazir is due to give a press conference about the disaster later in the day, officials said.

Yemenia was set up in 1978 and is 51 percent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 percent by the government in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, according to its website.

It is the latest air disaster involving Airbus since an Air France jet plunged into the Atlantic almost a month ago with 228 people on board.

AFP