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Sudanese plane crash kills 29, 14 missing

Rescue workers look at the wreckage of a Sudan Airways Airbus that caught fire after skidding off the runway at the Khartoum International Airport late on Tuesday night. PHOTO: EPA

Sudanese investigators were trying yesterday to determine what caused a jetliner that had just landed in a thunderstorm to veer off a runway and burst into flames in Sudan’s capital.

At least 29 people were killed inside the burning plane, while 171 managed to escape, Sudan Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Abdel Hafez Abdel Rahim Mahmoud said, adding that 14 still remained unaccounted for.

Many passengers fleeing the burning plane did not bother to pass through customs, making the toll initially difficult to ascertain.

By yesterday morning, the fire had been extinguished and civil defense officials were examining the wreckage to determine the cause of the crash, police spokesman Major General Mohammed Abdel Majid al-Tayeb told the official SUNA news agency.

The Sudan Airways jetliner appeared to have gone off the runway after landing at Khartoum International Airport, and several loud explosions resounded as fire raced through the aircraft, a reporter at the scene said.

The roaring blaze dwarfed the Airbus A310’s shattered fuselage as firefighters sprayed water, Sudanese TV footage showed. Ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene, and media were kept away.

One survivor said the landing was “rough,” and there was a sharp impact several minutes later.

“The right wing was on fire,” the passenger said.

He said smoke got into the cockpit and some people started opening the emergency exits. Soon, fire engulfed the plane, he told Sudanese television.

“As we landed, the engine burst into flame — I was sitting right next to it,” passenger Kamal Eddin Mohammed said.

“It was horror inside the plane,” Mohammed told Al-Jazeera TV.

A sandstorm had hit the area between 2pm and 3pm and there was a thunderstorm and similar winds at the time of the crash, said Elaine Yang, a meteorologist with the San Francisco-based Weather Underground, a private firm.

But there were differing reports on the role weather played.

The head of Sudanese police, Mohammad Najib, said bad weather “caused the plane to crash land, split into two and catch fire.”

Youssef Ibrahim, director of the Khartoum airport, told Sudanese TV that the plane “landed safely” and the pilot was talking to the control tower and getting instructions when the accident occurred. He blamed the accident on technical problems.

Civil aviation asked its counterpart in Amman, Jordan, the origin of the flight, for the passenger manifest to determine who was actually on the flight, as the original was destroyed in the crash, SUNA said.
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