A Chinese passenger was confirmed among a total of 62 people aboard the ill-fated Egypt Air plane which went down near the Tunisian capital of Tunis, an official of the Cairo airport said.
The name of the Chinese is Lu Xiaofeng, said the official, without giving more details.
An earlier report said that there were 65 people on board the Boeing 737 flight.
More than 10 relatives of the passengers were at the airport to wait for information about their loved ones, but airport officials said that no more information has so far been available.
An anxious Egyptian told Xinhua at the Cairo airport that his wife and their two children, one aged two, another aged two months, boarded the plane to see his father-in-law, a Tunisian.
A total of 18 bodies were found and 33 people survived the accident, according to Egyptian Ambassador to Tunisia Mahdy Fathallah.
It is premature to talk about technical aspects of the crash, the ambassador said.
According to eyewitnesses, the plane crashed into a hill, 10 kilometers away from the Tunis Carthage International Airport, due to bad weather conditions, heavy rains and poor visibility, he said.
The plane, identified as Flight 843, was en route from the Egyptian capital of Cairo to Tunis.
The control tower lost contact with the plane a few seconds before the crash, just after a distress call from the pilot, Egypt Air said in Cairo.
An Egypt Air plane plunged into the sea off the Massachusetts coast on October 31, 1999, soon after it took off from New York en route to Cairo. All 217 people aboard were killed.
( May 8, 2002)
