The Dutch boy who was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed 103 people greeted his relatives with a smile Thursday after they rushed from Holland to his hospital room in Libya and doctors said the 9-year-old was out of danger after successful surgery on his shattered legs. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said the boy's aunt and uncle were in the Libyan capital Tripoli and officials at al-Khadra hospital said a group of Westerners visiting him were his relatives. A Dutch Embassy spokeswoman in Tripoli told Dutch state broadcaster NOS that the boy immediately recognized his loved ones and smiled at them when they came in. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said the boy told an embassy official his name is Ruben and he is from the southern city of Tilburg in the Netherlands. A Dutch newspaper identified him as Ruben van Assouw and quoted a woman who appeared to be his grandmother as saying he had been in South Africa on safari with his brother and parents, who were celebrating their wedding anniversary. “We don't understand this at all,” she told the Dutch daily Brabants Dagblad. “It's like we're in a movie.” A bouquet of white flowers, the traditional color for mourning, was propped against the door of the van Assouw family home _ a two-story brick town house with white curtains covering the windows in a quiet neighborhood of Tilburg, 70 miles (115 kilometers) south of Amsterdam. Dr. Hameeda al-Saheli, the head of the pediatric unit at the hospital where the boy is being treated, said he is breathing normally and his vital organs are intact. She told the official Libyan news agency he suffered four fractures in his legs and lost a lot of blood, but his neck, skull and brain were not affected and he did not suffer internal bleeding. “As soon as his health permits he will be brought to the Netherlands,” the Dutch Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The boy was on the Libyan plane arriving from South Africa Wednesday when it crashed minutes before landing at the airport in the capital Tripoli. Libyan television showed images of him Wednesday laying on a hospital bed after the crash, breathing through an oxygen mask with his head bandaged and face bruised and swollen. The woman quoted in the Dutch newspaper who appeared to be the boy's grandmother, An van de Sande, said she was not positive the boy was her grandson because family members could not be sure based on the brief television images aired so far.
