Child is stable after Libyan air crash

Paris: A Dutch boy who was the only survivor of a plane crash in Libya that killed 103 people was in stable condition on Thursday after undergoing surgery on his broken legs, according to hospital officials quoted by news agencies.

Ruben van Assouw, 9, from the city of Tilburg, was returning from a South African safari with his 11-year-old brother and their parents, his grandmother told a Dutch newspaper.

The grandmother, An van de Sande, spoke to Brabants Dagblad, and a photograph on the paper's website showed the boy in a hospital bed with a breathing mask on. She said Ruben would be taken back to the Netherlands as soon as he was able to travel.

The airliner crashed Wednesday morning on approach to the airport in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Libyan and Dutch officials said 92 passengers were killed -- most of them Dutch tourists -- along with 11 crew members.

Dr Hameeda al-Saheli, the head of the pediatric unit at the hospital, told the state news agency in Libya that Ruben had four breaks in his legs, The Associated Press reported, although he had no neurological injuries or internal bleeding.

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The plane, Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 from Johannesburg, crashed at 6 a.m., the airline said.

The cause of the crash of the Airbus jet, which occurred in good weather, was under investigation, though Libya's transportation minister said Libyan authorities had ruled out terrorism. That determination was made quickly, and the minister, Mohammed Zidan, gave no indication of how officials had reached that conclusion.

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The flight recorders have been retrieved from the wreckage and will be analyzed, Mr Zidan said.

Daniel Hoeltgen, a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne, Germany, said the aircraft had been inspected at least three times in recent months by the French civil aviation authority, which did not find any significant safety problems.

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A spokesman for the Royal Dutch Touring Club ANWB said 61 of the dead were with two Dutch tour groups returning from South Africa, one going to Brussels and the other to Düsseldorf, Germany.

Ad Meijer, a spokesman in The Hague for the Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, said the Dutch Embassy staff had not yet verified whether all of those tourists were Dutch.

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In Britain, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office confirmed that at least one British citizen was on board. According to news reports, 22 victims were Libyan and at least 3 were South African.

The Bureau of Investigations and Analyses in France said that it had sent two investigators to Tripoli and that Airbus, which manufactured the plane, had sent a team of five specialists to assist the Libyan authorities.

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Photos from the scene showed debris strewn across a wide area. Workers wearing surgical masks picked through gnarled rows of seats, retrieving remains and personal items like passports and cellphones. With the exception of the plane's tail fin and parts of the wings, few large pieces of the plane appeared to have remained intact.

Airbus said the plane was delivered in September to Afriqiyah Airways. The plane had accumulated about 1,600 flight hours in about 420 flights.

Flight 771 originated in Johannesburg and was scheduled to stop in Tripoli before continuing to Gatwick Airport near London. The airline's schedule indicated that the plane was an Airbus A330-200 with a capacity of 253 passengers.

Afriqiyah Airways said the plane crashed just short of the runway. The skies were clear with visibility of 3 to 4 miles, and the winds were very light, according to weather reports. The crash was the first for Afriqiyah, which was founded in Tripoli in 2001.

Nicola Clark reported from Paris, and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.