MORONI - An airliner with 153 people on board crashed into choppy seas as it approached to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros today, officials said.

``The plane has crashed and we still don't know exactly where,'' Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim said from the airport at the main island's capital Moroni.

A Paris Airport spokeswoman said a Yemen Airways flight left Paris yesterday morning before landing in the Yemen capital San'a.

It then took off for Moroni. An airline official said most of the passengers on the plane were believed to be Comoros residents returning from Paris.

Interior Minister Hamid Bourhane said the army had sent small speedboats to an area between the village of Ntsaoueni and the airport.

``At the moment we don't have any information about whether there are any survivors,'' he told Reuters.