The nine-year-old Dutch boy who miraculously survived a plane crash in Libya returned to the Netherlands to rebuild his young life without his parents and brother.
Ruben van Assouw, who arrived a military air base in Eindhoven in an air ambulance, was whisked away to a hospital in his home town of Tilburg last night.
Ruben was the sole survivor, pulled unconscious from the wreckage of an Afriqiyah Airways jet that plunged into the desert less than a mile from the runway in Tripoli on Wednesday, killing 103 people, including two Britons.
Rescuers found Ruben still strapped in his seat and breathing in an area of desert sand strewn with the plane's shredded wreckage.
Ed Kronenburg, the top Dutch foreign ministry official in Libya, called the boy's return a "fantastic moment" despite his nation's sorrow over the crash's many victims.
Meanwhile investigators from the US and other countries were on the scene of the crash near the Libyan capital trying to determine what caused the crash. Others began identifying the dead, who include 70 Dutch nationals.
Ruben was flown back home with an aunt and uncle, and was then transferred to St Elizabeth Hospital in Tilburg, the home town of the Van Assouws. His father Patrick, 40, mother Trudy, 41, and brother Enzo died in the plane crash.
Ruben underwent more than four hours of surgery to repair multiple fractures to his legs on Wednesday, but doctors say he has been recovering well.
A statement by close relatives said the extended family would care for Ruben and asked the media for privacy while they were grieving. Ruben was shielded from the press at the air base and hospital.
It was not yet clear where he will live, though much of the family, including grandparents, lives in Tilburg.
"Let's make sure he can catch his breath peacefully in the arms of relatives," Tilburg's mayor Ivo Opstelten told Dutch television.
The boy and his relatives needed to find "a kind of balance with each other, so they can start sketching a future", he added.
The story of Ruben's improbable survival and tragic loss has moved people around the world. Hundreds offered condolences and wished the boy well on a blog set up by his father to chronicle the family's holiday to South Africa. They were returning home when their flight from Johannesburg to Tripoli crashed.
At the Yore primary school in Tilburg where Enzo was in 6th grade and Ruben the 3rd, many pupils returned early from their spring break to sign a condolence register for Enzo and prepare for Ruben's eventual return.
"When he comes back - we don't know exactly how things are going to go - but when he comes back to school, we're going to take awfully good care of him," school director Elly Sebregts said.
"That's the school's job, I think. What we can do for him, in the school sphere, we will do."
Investigators on a joint panel, which includes Americans, Dutch, French, South Africans and Libyans, met yesterday to plot their strategy to determine a cause of the crash. No findings were immediately released.
The US investigators are from the National Transportation Safety Board team since the the Airbus 330-200's engines were made by US manufacturer General Electric.
The plane's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder - were recovered intact and have been sent to Paris for review.
Naji Dhou, the head of the Libyan committee investigating the crash, said preliminary results indicate the plane had diverted about four degrees from the runway and landed about 400 yards in front of it.
He said debris from the crash was scattered in an 800-square-meter area and there was no explosion until the plane hit the ground.
Libya has ruled out terrorism as a possible cause of the crash.
Most of those on board the Airbus 330-200 flight were Dutch tourists and the Netherlands' government has requested DNA and other information from relatives to help identify bodies.