An Ottawa woman a believed to have been a passenger on the airliner that crashed into the indian ocean on tuesday with 153 people on board, the woman’s family told CBS News on tuesday.
Fatme Aboud. who is in her early 30s, was supposed to have been on board the Yemenia Airways flight, said her husband, Youssouf Mahmoud, from the family’s home in Ottawa, where he and two of their three children awaiting news.
Aboud’s third child, a baby boy has been left with her sister in Paris while she was travelling with some of her family members, who are also thought to have been on the plane.
Friends of the family said the mother of three had been on her way to visit her parents becouse her mother is ill.
Mahmoud said the airline hasn’t officially told him that his wife is dead.
Abouds family and friends gathered at the family home downtown Ottawa while her husband made preparations to fly overseas Tuesday afternoon.
Yemenia Airways flight 626 was an route from the Yemeni capital of the San’a to the Island nation of the Comoros when it went down in the Indian Ocean between the southeastern African cosat and Madagascar at about 1:50 a.m local time, officials said. It was the last leg of a journey taking passengers from Paris and Marseille to comoros via Yemen.
The majority of the 142 passengers were from Comoros Islands and were returning home from Paris, according to officials. France has said 66 of the passengers were french citizens. The plane also had 11 crew.
Officials confirmed three bodies and a 14-year-old female survivor have been recovered in the water of the Comoros, an archipelago of three islands about 2,900 kilometres south of Yemen.
There are reports the other survivors have been plucked from the ocean, including the captain of the plane, but authorities have not yet provided further information
Three search and rescue boats have been sent to an area about 30 kilometres from the destination airport, where debris and several bodies have been spotted in the water, said Mohammed Abdul Qader, a Yemeni civil aviation deputy.
Poor weather affected the region at the time of crash, with wind speeds up to 61 km/h and choppy seas.
Officials said there was no distress call from the plane when contact was lost on its landing approach, about five minutes before its expected arrival at the Comoran capital, Moroni, on the main island of the Grand Comore