A Paris schoolgirl, who survived a plane crash into the Indian Ocean this week, was told today that her mother had been lost in the wreckage off the Comoros Islands.

Bahia Bakari, 13, clung to a piece of debris in the ocean for more than 13 hours before being rescued. She was the only one to survive among 153 people on board the Yemenia Airlines flight that came down early on Tuesday.

She had previously been led to believe that her mother was in a nearby ward because doctors feared she could go into shock on hearing the truth.

“She is doing well,” said Kassim Bakari, her father. “She really needs a few days rest. She just learned that she has lost her mother."

The news was broken to Bahia on the day that she returned home to France to receive further treatment for cuts to her face, a fractured collarbone and burns to her knees.

She was greeted at Paris’ Le Bourget airport by her father and relatives who embraced her as she was carried off the plane on a stretcher.

She told her father how she had been thrown clear when the A310 Airbus hit the water as it was approaching Moroni airport.

“I asked her what happened,” said Mr Bakari, speaking at the family home at Corbeil, in the Paris suburbs. “She said: ‘We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Daddy, I couldn’t swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don’t know what’.”

Mr Bakari, who has three other daughters, said that he had given up hope of seeing his partner or eldest daughter again. When news reports of a child survivor emerged, he prayed that it was Bahia. “She is a very, very shy girl. I would never have thought she would have survived like this. It is God’s will,” he said.

Rescue workers praised Bahia for managing to stay afloat in rough seas among bodies and wreckage nine miles off the coast of Grande Comore island. Most passengers appeared to have gone down with the aircraft.

Sergeant Said Abdilai, one of the rescuers, said: “We tried to throw a lifebelt. She could not grab it. I had to jump in the water to get her.” He gave the girl warm water with sugar, he said. “She was shaking. We put four covers on her.”

The head of the disaster unit in the Comoros said that the teenager survived against “astonishing” odds. “It is truly, truly, miraculous,” said Ibrahim Abdoulazeb. “The young girl can barely swim.”

Alain Joyandet, the French Minister for Co-operation, visited Bahia in hospital. “It is a true miracle. She is a courageous young girl,” he said. “She held on to a piece of the plane from 1.30am to 3pm.”

Claire Ali, Bahia’s aunt, said: “She showed an absolutely incredible physical and moral strength.”

Anger is growing in France’s 200,000-strong Comoran community towards the airline, which serves the former French archipelago. Pilot error is suspected as the cause of the crash two minutes after the crew aborted their initial approach and circled low to make a second landing attempt in heavy winds.

Yemenia Airlines, which is owned jointly by Yemeni and Saudi Arabian interests, denied official French claims that the A310 Airbus was not airworthy.

In Marseilles, home to more Comorans than live in the Indian Ocean state’s capital, there were claims that the crash had been “a tragedy waiting to happen”. Moegni Toahiry, 39, who waited outside the Comoran consulate for news of his three children who were on the flight, said: “We had been sounding the alarm bells.”

It took several hours for the first boats to reach the scene of the crash owing to heavy seas. French and US military and naval vessels and divers combed the site yesterday, collecting bodies that were being carried away on a fast current.

Signals from the aircraft’s distress beacons were located last night several hundred feet below the surface, raising hopes that the wreckage will be found and the flight recorders recovered.

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