Two-year-old boy survives air crash that killed 116

A two-year-old boy was the only survivor of a plane crash in Sudan today that killed 116 passengers and crew.

The Boeing 737 had just taken off from Port Sudan airport on the Red Sea coast and was heading to the capital Khartoum.

It had only flown about three miles when the captain reported he was in trouble, “but fate was quicker”, said Sudan Airways director Ismail Zumray.

The boy was in a good condition after being rushed to hospital, local spokesman Salah Ali Ahmed said.

Officials said 11 crew members had died along with 105 passengers – 54 Sudanese men, 27 women and 16 children as well as eight foreigners, including Malaysians, French and a citizen of the United Arab Emirates.

Ahmed said the bodies of the dead had been burned, and further details on the passengers were not immediately available.

The crash happened at around 4am local time (2am Irish time), about three and a half miles inland from the airfield at Port Sudan. The jet went down in an uninhabited area, aviation officials said.

Ahmed said bad weather was not to blame for the accident. Civil Aviation Minister Mohammed Hassan el-Bahi said a team of experts had been sent to the scene to investigate the cause.

Several Sudanese military aircraft have crashed during the country’s 20-year-old civil war.

Two years ago, a military plane crash in the war-torn south killed the country’s deputy defence minister and 13 other senior officers.

In 1996, a Sudanese passenger jet crashed during a sandstorm while trying to make an emergency landing outside Khartoum, killing 50 people.

A decade earlier, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army shot down a Sudan Airways aircraft shortly take-off, killing all 70 people on board.

The rebels have been fighting for greater autonomy for the mainly Christian and animist south from Sudan’s Islamic government.

Port Sudan is about 400 miles north-east of the capital.

It is the country’s only significant port, and is also the site of the national oil refinery and the terminal of the pipeline from oil fields of south-central Sudan.