KHARTOUM, June 11 (SPA) - A Sudanese airliner comingfrom Amman and Damascus burst into flames after landing inKhartoum on Tuesday night, killing at least 33 of the 217 peopleon board, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday. Reuters quoted Doctors and officials as saying that the local mortuary had received 28 bodies by 3 a.m. on Wednesday (midnight GMT) and witnesses said they saw rescue teams remove five more bodies from the charred wreckage of the plane after daybreak. The Civil Aviation Authority said it had counted 113survivors but that other people had left the site of theincident and gone straight home without informing theauthorities. Presidential adviser Ghazi Salahaddin said that 50 to 60people were unaccounted for. The Sudan Airways plane, identified by Sudanese televisiononly as an Airbus without any model details, was carrying 203passengers and 14 crew on the flight from the Jordanian capital. A dust storm and heavy rain hit the airport on Tuesday andthe plane was initially diverted to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Sudan's Minister of State for Transport, Mabrouk MubarakSalim, said there was an explosion in the airliner's right wingengine area. "So far we don't have precise information but wethink the weather is a main reason for what happened," he said. Sudanese television showed emergency workers using hoses tospray water on the burning fuselage of the airliner. "The operation to recover bodies from the plane is going onnow," police deputy director general Al Adel Ajeb said in atelevision interview. "It is a difficult operation because somebodies are completely burned and there are body parts."--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/564188
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