Authorities in Sudan are trying to find missing passengers who fled when a plane carrying 210 people burst into flames after landing in Khartoum.

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Eyewitnesses say more bodies were removed from the charred Airbus A310 on Wednesday morning and more than 50 passengers are still unaccounted for.

The plane landed in bad weather and witnesses say an engine then exploded.

The fire quickly spread to the cockpit and forward fuselage as the passengers and crew made desperate efforts to escape down emergency slides.

TV footage showed the wreckage at Khartoum airport consumed by flames as emergency crews tried to fight the fire in the darkness on Tuesday night.

The Sudan Airways flight had flown from Jordan's capital, Amman, via Damascus and most of the passengers were Sudanese.

"The task of counting the survivors has been complicated because in the alarm and confusion they dispersed and some of them seem to have left the airport area," a spokesman for the Sudan's Civil Aviation Authority said, Reuters news agency reports.

Conflicting reports

Sudanese officials say the plane had tried to land at Khartoum earlier on Tuesday, but was unable to do so because of a sandstorm and heavy rain, the BBC's Amber Henshaw in Khartoum reports.

The plane was diverted to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

It later returned to Khartoum, landing at approximately 2000 (1700 GMT), our correspondent says.

There are then conflicting reports about what exactly happened.

The Civil Aviation Authority says the plane landed despite poor weather conditions after the brief diversion to Port Sudan.

The authority says the plane was taxiing to its parking bay when a fire started in one of the engines.

Some eyewitnesses say they had a bad landing and that the pilots had to brake hard.

Experts believe this could have caused the cylinders to blow, sparking an explosion.

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," Mr Ibrahim said.

Abbas al-Fadini, a member of Sudan's parliament who was on the plane, told al-Jazeera television 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.

Witnesses said they had seen some passengers escaping via emergency chutes after they deployed.

Sudan Airways operates a fleet of Airbus A300 and A310 jets.

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(BBC)

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