A South Korean child who survived yesterday's Vietnam Airlines plane crash in Phnom Penh has died in hospital, raising the death toll to 65, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said. The five-year-old boy, Oh Song-hyok, suffered severe burns when the Tupolev Tu-134 crashed while trying to land at Phnom Penh's Pochentong Airport. "The child died hours after he was taken to hospital in central Phnom Penh," the official said. "With his death, a Thai boy is the only survivor of the tragedy." Oh's parents and brother also died in the crash, he said.
The Tupolev Tu-134 was coming in to Phnom Penh from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, when it crashed about 300 metres from the runway after what appeared to have been an aborted approach, officials said.
The head of Cambodia's civil aviation authority said the plane's flight recorder had been found in the wreckage three hours after the crash. Another aviation official said the plane had been coming into land but the pilot apparently decided to abort the landing and revved up his engines in a failed bid to get clear of the ground again.
Most of the passengers were foreigners, including South Koreans, Australians, Japanese, Americans and Canadians, an airline official in Vietnam said.