Libya plane crash boy getting better

A Dutch boy who was miraculously survived a Libyan plane crash that killed 103 people including his parents greeted relatives who arrived to comfort him with a smile, a doctor said today.

The boy, identified only as "Ruben" by the Dutch foreign ministry but more fully named by Dutch media as nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw, is recovering after surgery to his smashed legs after Wednesday's crash, the doctor treating him in Tripoli said.

Dr Siddiq ben Dilla told AFP the boy, the sole survivor of Wednesday's plane crash at Tripoli airport, recognised his relatives and smiled when they entered his hospital room.

"His family is with him now," he said. "His memory is good: as soon as his relatives walked in he smiled, and was happy to see them.

"He is getting better, is beginning to talk again and has asked for food," Dilla told AFP. "Compared with yesterday he's very good. We have repaired all his fractures -- effectively several operations in one."

Earlier a Dutch foreign ministry spokesman said an uncle and an aunt arrived in Tripoli on Thursday on a Netherlands government plane and were taken to the hospital "to make sure that Ruben will see family faces next to his bed."

"He could be repatriated in the next couple of days if his health continues to improve," Dilla said.

Ruben would be flown home "as soon as his medical condition allows," Dutch foreign ministry spokesman Christoph Prommersberger told AFP, adding that the boy was doing "reasonably well."

"A colleague from the embassy (in Tripoli) was able to speak with him. He told her he was Ruben, nine years old, from the city of Tilburg," Prommersberger said. "He is not in a critical condition."

Dutch newspaper Babants Dagblad said the boy was probably Ruben van Assouw from Tilburg in the southern Netherlands who had been on safari in South Africa with his mother Trudy, 41, father Patrick, 40, and his brother Enzo, 11.

Also on board the Dutch government plane to Tripoli were forensic experts, consular staff and transport ministry staff, the foreign ministry said.

Libya's Transport Minister Mohammed Ali Zidan said a total of 103 people -- 92 passengers of nine nationalities and an 11-strong Libyan crew -- died when an Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 coming from Johannesburg disintegrated on landing at Tripoli airport.

The Dutch ministry said on Thursday that 70 Dutch nationals were among the dead, while a diplomat said family members from the Netherlands have been flown to Libya courtesy of Afriqiyah to identify the bodies and prepare their repatriation.

The ministry added in a statement that "the family of the nine-year-old Ruben, the sole survivor of the disaster," were among those who perished.

Johannesburg private Talk Radio 702 reported on Thursday that at least 10 South Africans died in the crash.

Libya's transport minister said the rest of the dead included two Germans as well as passengers from Britain, France, Finland, the Philippines and Zimbabwe, although he could not give a breakdown of their numbers.

With the plane's black boxes recovered, investigators from manufacturers Airbus and France where the plane was built have also flown to join the inquiry led by Libya, which has ruled out terrorism as the cause of the crash.

Witnesses spoke of the aircraft inexplicably breaking up as it came in to land in clear weather.

"It is too soon to know the causes of the accident," Sabri Shadi, the chairman of the board of Afriqiyah Airways, said about the probe.

"Several committees have been set up to investigate and we need some time before we can draw any conclusions," he said.

"A preliminary report should be published in the next few days but definitive results will not be know for several days, even weeks," he added.

Shadi said that after a first meeting which grouped the team that US investigators were to join the probe on Friday. The crash scene, meanwhile, has been placed under police guard.