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Khartoum: Sudanese investigators were trying to determine what caused a jetliner that had just landed in a thunderstorm to skid off a runway and burst into flames in Sudan's capital.
Khartoum airport reopened on noon on Wednesday.
At least 29 people were killed inside the burning plane, while 171 managed to escape, said Sudan Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Abdul Hafez Abdul Rahim Mahmoud to The Associated Press.
Another 14 remain unaccounted for, he said. Officials have said some survivors likely left the airport without reporting to authorities or going through customs amid the confusion.
By yesterday morning, the fire has been completely extinguished and civil defence officials were now examining the wreckage to determine the causes of the crash, police spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammad Abdul Majid Al Tayeb told the official Suna news agency. During the investigations, a fuel tank overheated in the summer sun and exploded, injuring two civil defence workers, Al Tayeb said.
Off the runway
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, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
Al Tayeb said an initial investigation showed the plane skidded off the end of the runaway and rammed into navigation poles, which are about 2m tall and mark the end of the runway, sparking a fire on the right side of the aircraft.
The roaring blaze dwarfed the Airbus A310's shattered fuselage as firefighters sprayed water, Sudanese TV footage showed. Ambulances and firetrucks 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," said the passenger, who did not give his name. He said smoke got into the cockpit and some people started opening the emergency exits. Soon, fire engulfed the plane, he told Sudanese television.
Passenger Kamal Eddin Mohammad said "as we landed, the engine burst into flame - I was sitting right next to it". "It was horror inside the plane," Mohammad 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 around 9pm local time, said Elaine Yang, a meteorologist with the San Francisco-based Weather Underground, a private weather service. But there were differing reports on the role weather played.
The head of Sudanese police, Mohammad Najeeb, said bad weather "caused the plane to crash land, split into two and catch fire".
Yousuf Ebrahim, director of the Khartoum airport, disputed that bad weather was to blame and told Sudanese TV that the plane "landed safely" and the pilots were talking to the control tower and getting further instructions when the accident occurred. "One of the [plane's] engines exploded and the plane caught fire," Ebrahim said. He blamed the accident on technical problems.
Airbus said in a statement that it was sending a team of specialists to Khartoum to help in the investigation. It said the plane involved in the accident was 18 years old and had been operated by Sudan Airways since September.
Civil aviation asked its counterpart in Amman, the origin of the flight, for the passenger manifest as the original was destroyed in the crash, Suna reported.
The number of serious jetliner accidents increased last year for the first time in a decade, according to a report last month by the International Air Transport Association. Nearly half of all jet accidents occurred on landing in 2007.
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