KHARTOUM, SUDAN - AT LEAST 28 people died and dozens more are missing after a passenger jet caught fire on landing at Khartoum airport, officials said yesterday.

State TV said earlier that nearly half of the 203 passengers died when the plane from Amman burst into flames after an engine exploded on landing late on Tuesday. The Sudan Airways Airbus A-310 was also carrying 11 crew members.

But yesterday, general director of investigations Taher al- Haj Ibrahim said: "For now, we have counted 121 survivors. The rest we consider as missing, but according to our information, some passengers went home before they could be counted."

The Sudanese authorities are to launch an official inquiry into the cause of the accident, television reported, amid contradictory reports that either weather or a technical failure were to blame.

The airport authorities said the engine fire spread to the fuselage. Survivors said weather conditions at the time were poor, with the capital hit by a sandstorm and heavy showers.

The plane had been turned back once from Khartoum by bad weather and forced to land in Port Sudan, before being allowed to return to the capital, the official Suna news agency said. --AFP