121 people have survived after a Sudan Airways Airbus caught fire last night on landing in Khartoum during a sandstorm.
28 people were confirmed dead and another 66 were said to be ‘unaccounted for’.
Sudanese television reported late yesterday that nearly half of the 203 passengers were killed when the plane from Amman burst into flames after one of its engines exploded.
But Khartoum airport's head of medical services, Major-General Mohamed Osman Mahjoub, said some of those might have survived and left the airport during the confusion after the fire broke out.
The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known.
One passenger said the plane had tried to land at Khartoum airport ‘but then the captain told us we couldn't land because of bad weather’.
He said the plane then flew to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan before returning to Khartoum an hour later.
A spokesman for Sudan's civil aviation authorities said the pilot was slightly injured and that all but one of the crew had been found alive.
