US Sanctions at heart of Sudan Airplane Explosion

Sudanese authorities were on Wednesday searching for passengers who escaped a jet carrying over 200 people that exploded on landing at Khartoum airport, burning at least 30 to death.

The Sudan Airways Airbus A310 burst into flames after landing late Tuesday, but on Wednesday dozens of the 214 people who were on board were still missing as authorities probed the cause of the accident.


Thirty bodies have been taken to Khartoum's morgue, an official said, adding that 121 people survived the accident. The rest are missing, with some believed to have simply gone home after the accident, without reporting to authorities.


State television said that nearly half of the 203 passengers were killed when the plane from Amman burst into flames after one of its engines exploded on landing. The plane was carrying 11 crew.


"We have 30 bodies at Khartoum morgue," said Taher al-Haj Ibrahim Abdin, the general director of investigations. "For now, we have counted 121 survivors," he said, adding that 22 of them were injured.


"The rest we consider as missing, but according to our information, some passengers went home before they could be counted."


The civil aviation authority and Sudan Airways were probing the cause of the accident amid contradictory reports that either weather or a technical failure were to blame.


Airport authorities said an engine caught fire, spreading to the fuselage, while survivors said weather conditions at the time of the landing were poor, with the capital hit by a sandstorm and then heavy showers.


"There was an explosion in one of the engines and the plane caught fire," Airport director Yussef Ibrahim said.


He told Sudanese television that "all measures had been taken to return airport activity and flights back to normal."


"Domestic and international flights have resumed."


The plane had flown from Amman via Damascus. It was turned back once from Khartoum by bad weather and forced to land in Port Sudan, before being allowed to return to Khartoum, the official SUNA news agency said.


TV pictures showed flames tearing through the upper section of the fuselage hours after the fire broke out. An emergency escape slide could be seen attached to one of the central doors of the plane.


State Transport Minister Mabruk Mubarak Salim said "today's weather is one of the main reasons for what happened."


Civil aviation official El-Sheikh el-Faki told AFP that the place "landed okay and then it skidded and caught fire."


Passengers said that the landing had been "very rough."


"When it came to a stop, fire was burning the right side of the plane and was beginning to burn the inside of the plane," survivor Awad Mohamed Idris, a retired Sudan Airways employee, told AFP.


Idris managed to find his relatives in the arrivals hall, but another man who gave his name as Aman said he was looking for the one-year-old child of a couple who had been hospitalised.

Ibrahim Saleh, one of the passengers at the back of the plane, said he had not seen many bodies but that there had been "many injured" on the tarmac.

He had first helped children off the plane before he himself had left. "When I got out there were still many people on board."

It was the latest in a long line of fatal air crashes and mishaps in Sudan.

In May, south Sudan's defence minister was killed in a plane crash along with at least 22 other people, most of them senior members of the southern former rebel leadership.

In July 2003, 115 people were killed when a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 was destroyed in a ball of fire as it attempted to land at the Red Sea resort of Port Sudan after apparently suffering an engine problem soon after take-off.

After that crash, the Khartoum government said the Sudanese air fleet was growing old and unable to buy spare parts for its US-made aircraft due to economic sanctions imposed by Washington.

Washington, which has placed Sudan on its list of countries supporting terrorism, says the sanctions do not prevent the delivery of spare parts for planes if these are requested.