By IRNA,
Pretoria : At least 28 people are known to have died on Tuesday evening when a passenger plane burst into flames after landing at Khartoum airport in Sudan.
Another 53 people are also missing following the accident in the Sudanese capital, although 123 people survived.
The Airbus A310 with more than 200 people on board landed in bad weather and was taxi-ing on the runway when an engine caught fire.
The Sudan Airways flight had flown from Jordan’s capital Amman via Damascus.
TV footage showed the wreckage consumed by flames as emergency crews tried to fight the fire in the darkness.
The director of Khartoum’s airport, Yusuf Ibrahim, told Sudanese national television that the plane had landed “safely” and the pilots were in contact with the control tower about which gate to dock at when the fire occurred.
“There was an explosion in one of the engines and the plane caught fire,” Ibrahim said.
Abbas al-Fadini, a member of Sudan’s parliament who was on the plane, said that the fire started in the right engine before spreading throughout the plane.
He said crew members had guided people towards the plane’s exits.
It was not immediately known what caused the blaze.
One survivor said he had escaped uninjured.