Sudan Plane Crash - 120 feared killed

Reports from Sudan say dozens of people were killed when a Sudan Airways Airbus 310 veered off a runway at Khartoum's airport and burst into flames, Voice of America reported Wednesday.

At least 120 people were feared dead last night after a Sudan Airways plane carrying more than 200 passengers burst into flames shortly after landing at Khartoum airport. The flight, which had stopped at Amman en route from Damascus apparently veered off the runway after touching down in bad weather.

This video frame grab image shows a plane that burst into flames after apparently veering off a runway in Khartoum, Sudan. Photograph: Sudan TV/AP

The Airbus 310 was engulfed in flames, but some passengers were reported to have escaped using the emergency slides before ambulances and fire engines reached the scene.

The airport's head of medical services, Major General Muhammad Osman Mahjoub, told Reuters: "There are 120 bodies and 97 survivors."

One passenger told Sudanese television the plane had tried to land "but then the captain told us we couldn't land because of bad weather". He said they then flew to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan and circled before returning to Khartoum an hour later. "When the pilot tried to land there was a crash," the passenger said.

At the time of the landing a dust storm in the Sudanese capital was restricting visibility, residents said.

Another passenger said the landing in Khartoum was "not normal" and described "an explosion in the right wing" two or three minutes after the plane landed.

A police spokesman, Muhammad Abdel Majid al-Tayeb, said that five bodies had been pulled from the wreckage, adding that about 100 people were safe, and an unspecified number in hospitals.

"There are missing passengers who could be still inside the plane, or who left the aircraft but did not inform officials that they were passengers," he said.

A Sudanese civil aviation spokesman said the pilot had been slightly injured and all but one of the crew had been found alive. Another police source said that 111 people were thought to have survived uninjured while 17 were being treated in hospital.

"The task of counting the survivors has been complicated because in the alarm and confusion they dispersed and some of them seem to have left the airport area," he added.

At its height, the fire, which was later put out, appeared to be consuming the fuselage and cockpit area. Television pictures showed emergency escape slides deployed at the side of the blazing aircraft.

There were conflicting reports as to the cause of the accident. The head of Sudanese police, Muhammad Najib, said the poor weather conditions had "caused the plane to crash land, split into two and catch fire". He added: "We believe that most of the passengers were able to make it out and escape with their lives."

But Youssef Ibrahim, director of Khartoum airport, told Sudanese TV the plane had "landed safely" and denied bad weather was responsible for the crash. "One of [the plane's] engines exploded and the plane caught fire," he said.

Sudan has a poor aviation safety record. In May, a plane crashed in a remote area of southern Sudan, killing 23 people, including key members of the southern Sudanese government. In July 2003, a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 plane en route from Port Sudan to Khartoum crashed soon after takeoff, killing all 115 people on board.