Comoros' President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi announced 30-day mourning from Thursday for those who died in Yemenia air crash on early Tuesday morning.

"As head of state, I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the families which lost their loved ones, relatives and friends," Sambi said in a national address, published by the presidential website on Friday.

The Airbus A310 of the Yemeni air carrier plunged into the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, about 12 km off the northern coast of Grande Comore with 153 people on board, including 142 passengers.

Only one of the passengers, a 13-year-old girl, has been rescued alive by the rescue team and the possibility of finding others alive is fading away

Describing the tragedy as one of the severest air disasters recently, Sambi thanked government officials, fishermen, villagers, the armed forces and the police for their rescue efforts, bravery and sacrifice in the tragedy.

He also thanked the French, the United States and the Yemeni governments for their prompt response and assistance to his country in the rescue mission.

The president disclosed that a senior government official he appointed recently was among the 142 passengers of the flight and went missing.

He promised to intensify the search for bodies and make more efforts to recover the black box of the aircraft in order to find out the reason for the accident.

Most of the passengers aboard the crashed IY626 flight are Comoro's people returning from Paris while others included 66 French nationals and passengers from several Middle East countries.

Source: Xinhua