SUDAN - July 8 - Crash Kills All Aboard Sudan Airways Flight Except Child.

A Sudan Airways airliner heading from Port Sudan to Khartoum crashes before dawn just after takeoff, killing 116 people and leaving one survivor - a 3-year-old boy found injured but alive amidst the charred corpses. The Boeing 737 wreckage was badly burned and the authorities decided to rapidly bury all bodies, including 8 foreigners. Red Sea State Governor Hatem el-Wassila told the official Sudan News Agency: "The bodies were buried in a mass grave after performing the Muslim prayer because the conditions of the bodies would not allow transporting and delivering them to the relatives". He said the sole survivor, Mohammad el-Fateh Osman, lost his right leg and suffered burns. The boy was in intensive care at the Port Sudan hospital and doctors said he was in stable condition. Eleven crew members and 105 passengers died, including 3 Indian nationals, one Briton, a Chinese, an Ethiopian, a UAE citizen and a woman whose nationality was unknown. Also killed was a senior air force official and a member of Parliament. A team of experts flew to the debris-covered scene to investigate and recovered the black box flight recorder. Initial reports indicated that a technical fault caused the crash. About 10 minutes after takeoff, the pilot radioed the control tower about a problem in an engine. The pilot announced he was returning for an emergency landing, but the plane went down a few kilometres outside the airport. Foreign Affairs Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail cast blame on US sanctions imposed in 1997, saying they had led to shortages of vital aircraft parts. He said during a visit to Mozambique: "This is a sad incident. We simply cannot get the parts to maintain our airplanes or rehabilitate them after five years. We are not even allowed to bring certain parts in through a third party". He called on US Pres. Bush, currently on an African tour, to drop the sanctions. (The US imposed sanctions claiming Khartoum sponsored terrorism, allowed human rights abuses and destabilised neighbouring countries).