By Ali Shuaib and Salah Sarrar
Tripoli - A Libyan Airbus jet crashed early on Wednesday as it tried to land at Tripoli airport, killing 103 people on board and leaving a Dutch boy the sole survivor, Libyan officials said.
The Airbus A330-200, only in service since September, was flying from Johannesburg to the Libyan capital when it crashed just short of the runway at around 6am, the airline and plane-maker said.
The aircraft is the same type as Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic on June 1 last year. The cause of that crash has not been identified.
Saleh Ali Saleh, an executive with Libya's Afriqiyah Airways told reporters that 62 Dutch nationals had been among those on board.
"Everybody is dead, except for one child," said Libyan Transport Minister Mohamed Zidan, who added the child was 10 years old. The plane was carrying 93 passengers and 11 crew, Libyan officials and executives from the airline said.
Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters in The Hague that the boy had said "Holland, Holland" to Libyan medical staff. The child's doctors at a Tripoli hospital said he had suffered leg fractures but was in a stable condition.
A manifest of those on board was not released but officials in Libya and in the passengers' countries of origin said, besides the Dutch, there were small numbers of nationals from Britain, Germany, the Philippines, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The transport minister told a news conference 13 Libyan passengers and crew had been on the aircraft. He said there were also citizens of France and Finland on board, though he did not say how many.
The minister said investigators were working out what went wrong with Afriqiyah Airways Flight 8U771.
Mohamed Rashid, a doctor at Tripoli's al-Khadra hospital, said the boy - identified by Libyan officials as a Dutch national - was doing well after surgery on his leg fractures.
"The operation was successful and he is under our care," he told reporters, adding that some of the medical staff spoke Dutch and were able to communicate with the patient. - Reuters