The only known survivor of the crash of the Yemeni airliner clung to wreckage in the Indian Ocean for more than 10 hours before she was rescued, officials have said, hailing the girl's courage.
Bahia Bakari, a timid 12-year-old, was recovering in hospital in the Comoros capital Moroni, a few kilometres from where the Yemenia airlines jet plunged into the sea in the early hours of Tuesday, killing the other 152 on board.
"She showed admirable courage," France's Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet told reporters after meeting the girl in hospital.
"She spent close to 10 hours waiting to be rescued after the crash."
Bahia's father, Kassim Bakari, said earlier that his daughter was ejected from the plane into the ocean, and suffered a fractured collarbone and burns to her knee, but no life-threatening injuries.
The Comoran told French radio Bahia was ejected from the plane as it hit the sea, after speaking with her by phone from her intensive care unit.
"She said: 'Papa, we saw the plane going down in the water … I was in the dark, I couldn't see a thing,'" Mr Bakari told the BBC.
"'On top of that daddy, I can't swim well and I held on to something, but don't really know what.'"
Some others aboard the A310 survived the impact with the rough seas, at least for a while, the girl told her father.
"She could hear people talking, but in the middle of the night she couldn't see a thing — she managed to hold on to a piece of something," he said.
Mr Bakari also spoke about the moment he said goodbye to his wife and daughter in Paris.
"I kissed them both, then my wife turned around, she looked at me and she waved, and my daughter didn't do anything," he said.
"And that was the last time I saw my wife alive, because my daughter... I will see her again I hope, but for my wife it was the last time."
When her rescuers emerged in the clear light of day, more than 10 hours later according to the minister, she was too weakened to react.
"We tried to throw a life buoy. She could not grab it. I had to jump in the water to get her," one rescuer told France's Europe 1 radio, saying that when she was spotted, she was bobbing in the middle of bodies and plane debris.
"She was shaking, shaking. We put four covers on her. We gave her hot, sugary water. We simply asked her name, village."
The head of the government crisis cell in the Comoros said the girl survived astonishing odds. "It is truly, truly, miraculous," said Ibrahim Abdoulazeb. "The young girl can barely swim."
Bakari said his daughter had been told her mother survived the crash.
"When I spoke to her she was asking for her mother. They told her she was in a room next door, so as not to traumatise her. But it's not true. I don't know who is going to tell her."
Joyandet, who said she would be flown back to France by the French government, gave the girl's age as 12. Officials have variously said she was 14 or 13, but the minister's spokesman said she would turn 13 on August 15.
He scotched rumours that a second child had been found alive, reported by doctors who said their hospital had been put on alert.
Yemenia airlines, which has come under attack from victims' families angry over its safety record, said it will make an initial payment of $34,600 to the families of each victim.
Chairman Abdul Khaleq al-Qadi told reporters in Sanaa the payments would be "a first instalment," without saying when they would begin.
The announcement came amid mounting anger over the condition of the 19-year-old Yemenia jet, which had been banned from France's airspace because of doubts about its safety. Airbus has stopped manufacturing the long-haul plane since 2007.
Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim criticised France over the crash, saying Paris should have alerted them that the plane was unsafe.
"We wish the French could have informed us of any irregularity or any problems with that plane," Nadhoim told France 24 television.
"It could have been easier for us if France had communicated to us the list of Airbus planes not good to fly, which is not the case," he said.
The flight left Paris on Monday for Marseille and Sanaa aboard a modern Airbus A330, where passengers switched to the older Airbus jet to continue to Djibouti and Moroni.
Comorans in Marseille, home to more Comorans than the tiny Indian Ocean state's capital, said the tragedy was waiting to happen.
"We had been sounding the alarm bells, both here and in the Comoros," said Moegni Toahiry, 39, as he stood outside his Comoran consulate hoping for news of his cousin and three children who were on the flight.
Some Comorans staged a protest at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Wednesday delaying a Yemenia flight for 40 minutes to highlight what they called poor safety conditions on the planes.
Around 100 protestors forced two Marseille travel agents selling Yemenia tickets to shut down on Wednesday.
A desperate hunt for other survivors continued and the French government said the signal from one of the A310's black boxes had been detected by a military plane.
Joyandet later backtracked, saying they picked up signals from distress beacons and not the black box flight recorders.
Airbus, still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330 into the Atlantic on June 1 with 228 people on board, has sent investigators to the Comoros.
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