The nine-year-old Dutch boy who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Libyan capital prepared to fly home yesterday, three days after the disaster that killed his parents, brother and 100 others.
Dutch foreign ministry spokesman Christoph Prommersberger said on Friday that the boy, Ruben van Assouw, would be accompanied on the flight home “by his uncle and aunt and the doctor treating him.”
They are set to leave Tripoli at 10am for a destination in the Netherlands that the ministry refused to disclose.
The aircraft is expected to depart from Matiga military airport in the capital. The Dutch federation of tour operators said its destination would be Eindhoven military airport.
The boy’s aunt and uncle said that Ruben has now been told that his mother, father and 11-year-old brother died in Wednesday’s crash at Tripoli airport that killed a total of 103 people and whose cause remains unknown.
“We have explained to Ruben exactly what happened,” they said in a statement read to media in Tripoli.
“He knows that his parents and his brother are dead,” his relatives said.
It said Ruben was doing well under the circumstances and had seen the flowers and messages of support sent to him.
“The time ahead will be a difficult period for us,” the statement said. “We hope that the media will respect our privacy.”
Earlier Ruben told a Dutch newspaper he could remember nothing of the crash.
“My name is Ruben and I am from Holland,” Telegraaf newspaper reported on a telephone conversation with the only survivor of the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 that disintegrated on landing at Tripoli airport.
“I am fine, but my legs hurt a lot,” the boy told a reporter from the newspaper on the mobile phone of one of his doctors.
“I am in a hospital,” Ruben said. “I don’t know how I got here, I don’t know anything more. I really want to go home.”
The Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad said Ruben was probably from Tilburg in the southern Netherlands and that he had been on safari in South Africa with his mother, Trudy, 41, father, Patrick, 40, and brother Enzo.
The boy’s grandmother, An van de Sande, said in a report on Thursday that the holiday had been to celebrate the couple’s “copper” wedding anniversary.
A Libyan official said on yesterrday that a security agent died of shock on the day of the disaster when he saw the bodies at the crash site on Wednesday.
“He was a diabetic. He ran towards the scene but at the sight of the bodies his blood sugar levels soared and he died on the spot,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
He said the man, who had worked at Tripoli airport, was “elderly.”
Crash investigators have said no technical problems were reported by the pilot before the jet went down.
“The pilot did not report any problems. Until the very last moment things were normal between the pilot and the control tower,” Neji Dhaou, the head of the Libyan commission of inquiry, said on Friday.
Tunisian President Kais Saied yesterday condemned a European Parliament resolution on human rights calling for the release of his critics as “blatant interference.” The EU Parliament resolution, voted by an overwhelming majority the day before, called for the release of lawyer Sonia Dahmani, a popular critic of Saied, who was freed from prison on Thursday, but remained under judicial supervision. “The European Parliament [resolution] is a blatant interference in our affairs,” Saied said. “They can learn lessons from us on rights and freedoms.” Saied’s condemnation also came two days after he summoned the EU’s ambassador for “failing to respect diplomatic rules.” He also
Tropical Storm Koto killed three people and left another missing as it approached Vietnam, authorities said yesterday, as strong winds and high seas buffeted vessels off the country’s flood-hit central coast. Heavy rains have lashed Vietnam’s middle belt in recent weeks, flooding historic sites and popular holiday destinations, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Authorities ordered boats to shore and diverted dozens of flights as Koto whipped up huge waves and dangerous winds, state media reported. Two vessels sank in the rough seas, a fishing boat in Khanh Hoa province and a smaller raft in Lam Dong, according to the
Sri Lanka made an appeal for international assistance yesterday as the death toll from heavy rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah rose to 123, with another 130 reported missing. The extreme weather system has destroyed nearly 15,000 homes, sending almost 44,000 people to state-run temporary shelters, the Sri Lankan Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said. DMC Director-General Sampath Kotuwegoda said relief operations had been strengthened with the deployment of thousands of troops from the country’s army, navy and air force. “We have 123 confirmed dead and another 130 missing,” Kotuwegoda told reporters in Colombo. Cyclone Ditwah was moving away from the island yesterday and
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
RSS