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Nigeria mourns plane crash victims
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-10-24 10:56
Nigeria began three days of mourning on Monday for 117 people who died when
an Abuja-bound Boeing 737 passenger plane crashed after taking off from Lagos
airport, killing everyone on board.
Bellview Airlines flight 210 slammed into a field near the village of Lissa,
about 30 km (20 miles) north of Lagos, leaving a smoking 70 foot (20 metre)
crater in the marshy earth, uprooting trees and blowing the roofs off nearby
houses.
The plane left Lagos during a heavy electrical storm on Saturday night and
the pilot made a distress call shortly after, indicating a technical problem.
But the probe into the cause of the disaster and the grim task of identifying
victims will be made more difficult because of the violence of the crash.
Dismembered and burned body parts, fuselage fragments and engine parts were
strewn over an area the size of a football field.
A wig, human intestines, clothes, foam seats and a hand were seen wedged in
the sodden earth. A cheque for 948,000 naira ($7,300) from the evangelical
Deeper Life church was one of a number of personal papers found in the
smouldering wreckage.
A senior police official at the scene said: "The aircraft has crashed and it
is a total loss. We can't even see a whole human body."
A government statement released late on Sunday said: "The Federal Government
announces with regret the unfortunate air crash of Bellview Airlines ... which
resulted in the loss of life of all passengers and crew on board."
State television said the nation would hold three days of mourning for the
dead.
DISTRAUGHT
The route the airliner was taking is heavily travelled, with dozens of
flights each day between the port of Lagos -- one of the world's biggest cities
-- and Abuja in the heart of Africa's most populous nation.
The plane was carrying 111 passengers and six crew, the Federal Airport
Authority said.
A U.S. official confirmed that a U.S. military officer was aboard the
aircraft. Diplomats and airline officials said it was also believed to be
carrying a top official of the Economic Community of West African States, a
Nigerian presidential aide, two Britons and a German.
Distraught relatives wailed and prayed at Lagos airport as a Bellview
Airlines official read out a list of passengers. The list may not be entirely
accurate because tickets are often transferred between people in Nigeria, the
official said.
Aviation analysts said the fact the aircraft was at least 20 years old may
have been a factor in the crash, but asked why there was so much confusion and
delay in finding the crash site.
Bellview Airlines is a privately owned Nigerian airline and is popular with
expatriates. It recently began international flights to India and London.
In Seattle, Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier said the company would work with
the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board if the board was asked to help
with any investigation in Nigeria.
She said the 737 was the "workhorse of the world commercial jet fleet".
More than 140 people died in May 2002 when a Nigerian airliner slammed into a
poor suburb in the northern city of Kano, killing people on board and on the
ground. The aircraft ploughed into about 10 buildings shortly after take-off.
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