One of the 19 survivors of a Spanish jetliner which crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 153 people, recalled on Thursday seeing bodies scattered everywhere as she escaped the wreckage of the plane.

"I lifted my head and all I saw were scattered bodies," Ligia Palomino, a doctor, told Spain's top-selling daily newspaper El Pais.

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Dr Palomino, who turns 42 on Sunday, says she was left semi-conscious immediately after the Spanair plane slammed into a field beyond the runway on Wednesday, but woke up when one of the MD-82's fuel tanks exploded.

"I heard a horrible noise and I fled," she told the newspaper, adding she then called her sister from the ambulance that took her to a Madrid hospital.

Plane 'lurched'

Dr Palomino says the 15-year-old plane, which was bound for the Canary Islands, shook violently before it slammed into a field near the airport.

"The plane lurched from side to side until I suspected that it would fall," she told news radio Cadena Ser.

"I feel like I was born again and that I have many things left to do. Very important things with my family," she adds.

Dr Palomino was seated at the front of the plane. She suffered burns, cuts to her face and had surgery for a bone facture on her left leg.

Transport Minister Magdalena Alvarez says the jet had returned to the terminal once because of a technical problem and got about 50 metres off the ground before it came down, breaking up in flames.

Children rescued

Four of the 19 injured from the crash, Spain's worst aviation accident in 25 years, were in "very serious" condition in hospital on Thursday.

An airport worker, who gave her name only as Maria, told Spanish media that she escorted two surviving children, an 11-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy from the crash site to ambulance.

"The boy was in good shape, he complained of some pain, but what concerned him most was finding his parents," she says, adding the girl also "asked insistently" for her mother.

The boy is in hospital with a fractured leg. His father died in the air crash while his mother is in a coma, radio Cadena Ser reported.

The girl is in serious condition in hospital. Another child, a six-year-old, survived the accident and is in hospital.

Another passenger who survived, Beatriz Reyes, 41, who was returning home after a holiday in South Africa, used a mobile telephone belonging to another surviving passenger to call her sister Laura to say she was alright.

"I noticed something was wrong with the plane. The other memory I have is that I lifted my head up and saw that the plane had no roof," she says.
Source: AFP