After an apparent aborted landing, Flight IY 626 bringing 142 passengers and 11 crew from France and Yemen crashed into the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Tuesday. It seemed like everyone in the Comoros capital, Moroni, watched the disaster and the road to the airport was soon blocked with traffic.

A former defence minister and a former head of civil aviation in the Indian Ocean archipelago were among those who saw the A310 jet make a first failed approach on Moroni-Hahaya airport.

"I saw the plane approach and then go away again, I just could not understand it," said former defence minister Houmed Msaidie, who went to the airport with his wife to pick up his mother in law.

"It looked to me as though the plane was having difficulties landing," said Mohamed Yahya, former director of Comoros civil aviation department. Yahya said the jet's engines sounded as though they were having problems.

"I saw the plane trying to land. I went into the terminal to meet my mother, but there was no plane," Moussa Boina, another shell-shocked witness, told AFP.

The flight was due to land at 1:30am and 30 minutes later news of the crash had already quickly spread across the main island, Grande Comore.

The 16-kilometre road between Moroni and the airport was soon jammed with cars as families rushed to find out more about missing relatives, causing a rare jam that lasted for hours.

Former lawmaker Assoumani Youssouf Mandura counted his blessings. "I am so lucky. My wife was to take this flight but changed at the last minute due to a promotion by Air Madagascar," he said.

Other distraught families thronged the airport, weeping and hugging each other.

Many people did not go to work on Tuesday and members of the government went to the airport to offer condolences. National radio halted its normal programmes and only broadcast the recital of verses of the Koran in mourning.

Other residents left their houses in the middle of the night, and gathered in groups in the streets as news of the disaster spread further.

"It is so tragic for anybody to handle it alone," said Mohamed Ali, a primary school teacher.

"It is even worse because of the holidays and huge wedding season," he added, referring to a tradition of lavish weddings characterised by huge family celebrations during summer.

Ali added that "many of the crash victims are without doubt Franco-Comorans coming to celebrate the huge weddings during summer holidays."

Airline denies technical faults

Meanwhile, Yemen's transport minister said on Tuesday that the Yemenia Airbus that crashed off the coast of Comoros Islands was checked in May and had no technical faults.

"The aircraft was checked in May 2009. It flies frequently to Europe and had flown to London last week," Khaled al-Wazir told AFP.

He said the check was conducted on the A310-300 in Sanaa under the supervision of European aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

"We are in touch, through the French embassy in Sanaa, with the French minister of state... who has denied that the cause of the accident could have been a technical fault in the aircraft."

"There were some remarks made in 2007 about the aircraft's seats and decoration issues with the passenger cabin but it was tackled back then," he added.

He refused to give further details about the accident until the conclusion of the investigation into the crash of the airliner, which had 153 people on board.

However, French transport minister Dominique Bussereau was damant that the Yemenia Airbus had been banned from French airspace because of "irregularities".

"A few years ago, we banned this plane from national territory because we believed it presented a certain number of irregularities in its technical equipment," Bussereau told parliament.

A Yemeni technical team was dispatched to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands, to coordinate with the authorities there and French investigators.

AFP