By Ali Shuaib
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A Libyan Airbus jet crashed early on Wednesday as it tried to land at Tripoli airport, killing 103 people on board, most of them Dutch, leaving a young Dutch boy the sole survivor, Libyan officials said.
The Airbus A330-200, which had been in service only since September, was flying from Johannesburg to the Libyan capital when it crashed just short of the runway around 6 a.m. (5:00 a.m. British time), the airline and planemaker said.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said there were several dozen Dutch passengers on board the aircraft. Libyan officials said 22 of the victims were Libyans. They gave no details of the other nationalities on board.
"Everybody is dead, except for one child," Libyan Transport Minister Mohamed Zidan told a news conference at Tripoli airport. The plane was carrying 93 passengers and 11 crew, Libyan officials and executives from the airline said.
The minister said investigators were working out what went wrong with Afriqiyah Airways Flight 8U771 but that he ruled out terrorism as the cause.
Libyan online newspaper Quryna, which has close ties to the government, reported that shortly before the crash the pilot had contacted the control tower to ask them to alert emergency services because there was a problem with the plane.
There was no official confirmation of that report.
The sole survivor was a 10-year-old Dutch child who was in hospital but did not have life-threatening injuries, the Libyan transport minister said.
A spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry said diplomats were planning to visit the boy as soon as possible to try to confirm his identity.
"One of our colleagues in Tripoli was told by a doctor at the hospital that he has broken bones and was being operated on," the spokesman said.
Footage broadcast on Libyan state television showed the child in a hospital bed, wearing a breathing mask. The child appeared to be conscious, and the only visible sign of any injury was a bandage around the top of his head.
Reuters pictures from the crash site showed the ground carpeted with small pieces of debris from the plane and passengers' personal effects, including a Dutch-language guide book to South Africa.
Only the tail fin was more or less intact, standing upright but leaning at an angle.
DUTCH TOUR PARTY
It was possible that some of the passengers had been bound for Britain because the flight from Johannesburg connects in Tripoli with an Afriqiyah Airways service to London.
Dutch Motorists' Association ANWB, which has an emergency assistance service for Dutch people abroad, said 61 Dutch nationals were killed in the crash.
A spokeswoman said they were travelling on tours organised by travel agencies Stip Reizen and Kras.
Saleh Ali Saleh, head of the Afriqiyah Airways legal department, told Reuters by telephone that the plane's black boxes had been recovered from the crash site.
"The deaths were probably due to the impact as I did not hear any report of a fire. The plane was travelling fast as it was still short of the runway when it crashed," Saleh said.
Planemaker Airbus issued a statement confirming it had manufactured the jet involved in the crash. "Airbus will provide full technical assistance to the authorities responsible for the investigation into the accident," it said.
The crashed aircraft was delivered from the production line in September 2009 and had accumulated approximately 1,600 flight hours in some 420 flights, Airbus added.
Afriqiyah Airways, which is owned by the Libyan state and was established in 2001, has never before had a crash.
European aviation safety officials told Reuters that Afriqiyah's aircraft -- including the plane in Wednesday's crash -- had been subject to regular inspections and no significant problems had been reported.
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 firmly identified.
