TRIPOLI, Libya - The Dutch boy who survived a plane crash that killed 103 people in the Libyan capital is in satisfactory condition after surgery on his shattered legs, doctors said Thursday. The official Libyan news agency identified the survivor as 10-year-old Ruben van Ashout, but a Dutch newspaper offered a different spelling and age. The Brabants Dagblad daily in the southern Netherlands said he might be 9-year-old Ruben van Assouw from the city of Tilburg. His grandmother, An van de Sande, told the paper Ruben was in South Africa on safari with his brother and parents, who were celebrating their wedding anniversary. She told the paper that she had not personally seen the television footage of the survivor, but other family members who had were not certain that the boy was their relative. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the boy's identity. But national NOS broadcaster reported that an aunt and uncle left from Rotterdam Airport for Libya early Thursday on a government plane, which also was carrying five forensic investigators. The boy was shown on Libyan TV breathing through an oxygen mask with multiple intravenous lines connected to his body and a monitor at his bedside. He underwent surgery for multiple fractures in both legs after being pulled from the debris of the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus that crashed minutes before landing in Tripoli after a more than seven-hour flight across the African continent from Johannesburg. About half of the crash victims were Dutch tourists who had been vacationing in South Africa. Dr. Hameeda al-Saheli, the 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. Al-Saheli said the boy suffered four fractures in his legs and lost a lot of blood, but she said his neck, skull and brain were not affected by the crash and he did not suffer internal bleeding. 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, an American airline pilot and aviation author.
