A young boy was the sole survivor yesterday when a Sudan Airways passenger plane on a domestic flight crashed into a wooded hill and turned into a fireball which killed at least 115 people.
Mohammed al-Fatih lost his right leg and suffered burns but was said to be in a stable condition after being taken to a hospital at Port Sudan, the Red sea town which the Boeing 737 left shortly before dawn on its way to the capital Khartoum, 450 miles to the south-west.
An employee for the national airline said 104 passengers and 11 crew had perished after the plane encountered technical problems. Other reports put the death toll at 116.
It was not clear last night whether Mohammed’s parents were on board. Like most of the passengers he was assumed to be Sudanese.
There was confusion about his age. An airline spokesperson said he was nine months old but the regional governor said he was three years old.
The passenger list described him as a ”suckling infant”. His name was also given as Mohammad el-Fateh Osman.
A senior air force official and an MP were among the dead. State radio said eight foreigners had also died: three Indians, a Briton, a Chinese, an Ethiopian, a United Arab Emirates citizen and a woman whose nationality was unknown. The passenger list said 17 children had been on board.
The plane took off around 4am. After 10 minutes the pilot reported technical problems and tried to return to Port Sudan but crashed several miles south of the airport.
”In his attempt to make an emergency landing, the plane hit the ground and crashed, killing all people on board except that child,” the director of Sudan Airways, Ismail Zumrawy, told state-run radio.
The foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, blamed US sanctions, imposed in 1997 in response to Sudan’s brutal civil war, saying they had denied vital aircraft parts.
”This is a sad incident. We simply cannot get the parts to maintain our airplanes or rehabilitate them after five years.”
Local residents rushed to the scene to help but, aside from Mohammed, found only burnt remains across a large area and twisted wreckage.
”Bodies were scattered everywhere, burned and charred and could be seen all over the place,” Muhammad Osman Babikir, a journalist with el-Sahafa daily, told the Associated Press. ”There was no way of performing the Muslim ritual of washing the bodies. It was horrible.”
In keeping with Muslim tradition the bodies were buried as soon as possible, reportedly several in each coffin. Sudanese television said the victims had been buried in a mass grave. Port Sudan’s airport witnessed anguished scenes when relatives of the passengers flocked there for news. Khartoum’s airport was also besieged by people fearing they had loved ones aboard.
A Sudan Airways employee said that it was unclear how many bodies had been identified.
”The crash was very hard, so identifying the bodies has been very difficult,” another airline official said.
”Until now, it is very hard to identify which other nationalities were on board,” he said.
The aviation minister, Mohamed Hassan al-Bahi, said a committee had been formed to investigate the crash.
Sudan has been riven by decades of civil war but the fighting is mostly in the south.
Port Sudan, with a population of 300 000, is peaceful and recommended by guide books as a base for snorkelling in the Red sea.
Despite a reputation among passengers for allegedly poor maintenance Sudan Airways has had few accidents in recent years.
Last year one of its cargo planes crashed into a residential area of the Central African Republic’s capital Bangui, killing 23 people, mostly passengers and crew.
Another of its cargo planes crashed while trying to land at Nairobi airport in 1990. Four years before that 60 people died when a rebel missile downed a passenger plane soon after takeoff from the southern town of Malakal.
The 737 which crashed yesterday was the only aircraft owned by the airline; all others in the fleet are leased. – Guardian Unlimited Â