Libya crash survivor is back home
A nine-year-old Dutch boy, the sole survivor of the Libyan plane crash, returned to the Netherlands on Saturday, three days after the disaster killed his parents, brother and 100 others, the Dutch tourism federation said.
“The plane with the surviving boy has landed” at the Eindhoven military air base in the southern Netherlands, ANWB spokesman Markus van Tol said.
Ruben van Assouw “was taken in an ambulance with doctors to hospital,” said Mr Van Tol, who declined to say where the boy would be treated “for privacy reasons.” Foreign ministry officials declined to say anything about the boy’s arrival.
Dutch news agency ANP said the plane transporting the boy landed around 2.15 pm, after which he was moved to an ambulance with blacked out windows. Every effort was made to hide the boy from the sight of journalists and onlookers, the agency said.
Ruben had been accompanied on the flight from Matiga military airfield in the Libyan capital by his uncle, aunt and the Libyan doctor who had been treating him.
“He’s a very special patient. He is talking and in good health. I will stay (in the Netherlands) for as long as necessary,” Dr Siddiq ben Dilla said before the Cessna Citation Libyan air ambulance took off.
The police prevented photographers from approaching as Ruben was taken from hospital by stretcher, covered in a blue blanket and with a black cap on his head and scarf covering his face, to the ambulance for the journey to the airport. The boy’s aunt and uncle said on Friday that Ruben now knows that his mother, father and 11-year-old brother died in Wednesday’s crash at Tripoli airport, whose cause remains unknown.
The Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 flight from Johannesburg in South Africa had disintegrated on landing. —AFP
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