A local newspaper in the Netherlands said the lone survivor of the crash appeared to be 9-year-old Ruben van Assouw from the city of Tilburg.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry confirmed the boy had told an embassy official on Thursday that his name is Ruben, he is 9 and he comes from Tilburg. The ministry did not publish a last name but said the boy's uncle and aunt had arrived in Tripoli and would see him as soon as possible.

"As soon as his health permits he will be brought to the Netherlands," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

The boy had been widely shown in Libyan TV footage laying on a hospital bed breathing through an oxygen mask after Wednesday's crash, but his features were largely hidden.

He underwent surgery for multiple fractures in both legs after being pulled from the debris of the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 that crashed minutes before landing in Tripoli after a more than seven-hour flight from Johannesburg.

About half of the crash victims were Dutch tourists who had been vacationing in South Africa.

Dr. Hameeda al-Saheli, head of the pediatric unit at the Libyan hospital where he was treated, told the official Libyan news agency Thursday that the boy is breathing normally and his vital organs are intact.

Officials had no immediate explanation for the boy's survival. There have been at least five cases this decade of a single survivor in a commercial plane crash. Last summer, a young girl was found clinging to wreckage 13 hours after a plane went down in the water off the Comoros Islands.

"The idea of a lone survivor might seem a fluke, but it has happened several times," said Patrick Smith, a US airline pilot and aviation author.

Associated Press

(China Daily 05/14/2010 page11)