Air crash toddler found in thorn bush

THIS is the three-year-old Sudanese boy who was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed 115 people.

Doctors were mystified as to how Mohamed al-Fateh, who was burned and lost part of a leg, had survived Tuesday’s crash near Sudan’s Red Sea coast, speculating that he was thrown clear of the plane on a piece of wreckage and may have landed on a bush.

The Sudan Airways Boeing 737 was destroyed in a ball of fire as it attempted to land back at Port Sudan after apparently suffering an engine problem soon after takeoff.

“Mohamed is okay. He speaks and drinks juices, thanks to God,” his uncle Abdel Hadi Ibrahim Abu-Saba’ah told AFP after seeing the boy in the intensive care ward of the police hospital here.

Mohamed “is in a stable condition, with plastered burns to the face, neck, right hand and right leg”, said Abu-Saba’ah, the brother of the boy’s mother, Lubna Ibrahim Abu-Saba’ah, who died in the crash.

He said Mohamed was returning with his mother to Khartoum after they attended the wedding of Lubna’s cousin in Port Sudan.

State television showed Mohamed in the arms of a doctor, enveloped in a sheet and his left leg wrapped in a bandage, while his face appeared calm but covered with dark spots, perhaps burns or bruises.

He was treated first in a hospital in Port Sudan before being brought to the intensive care unit of Saheroun, a private branch of Khartoum’s police hospital, relatives and hospital sources said.

Doctor Abdel Samei Abdallah al-Tayeb told AFP that 14 to 15% of Mohamed’s body is burnt, including the face, the right thigh, the right hand and the perineum.

He said it was unclear how the boy lost part of his lower right leg, or even how he survived at all.

Asked about reports from Port Sudan that the boy was found on a thorn bush near the wreckage, Tayeb said the tree might have served as “a cushion that helped the boy to survive.”

The doctor said Mohamed was taking fruit juices by the mouth as well as intravenous fluids and he rated his chances of survival as high.

The official newspaper Al-Anbaa said the government was assuming all costs of the boy’s treatment and reported that he arrived here accompanied by first vice president Ali Osman Taha, who had led an official delegation to Port Sudan.

Among those killed in the crash was Sudan’s air defence commander Major General Nur al-Hoda Fadhlallah and eight foreigners, including three Indians, one Chinese and one Briton.

The pilot of the flight to Khartoum reported “technical problems with one of the engines” 10 minutes after takeoff and told the control tower he was returning to the airport.