- Plane crashes in Nigeria, killing more than 150 people
- Lands on belly and glides through neighbourhood
- Unknown number on flight because of poor records
Dana Air, a passenger airplane carrying over 150 people has crashed in Lagos (the largest city of Nigeria), killing all passengers aboard, an emergency official said.
Many charred corpses could be viewed in the rubble on the building destroyed because of the plane, as firefighters looked for survivors and taken a dead body from the debris.
Eye-witness Praise Richard said he heard a loud explosion and after that, he saw smoke and fire rising in the crash site.
"I don't believe there'll be any survivors," Mr Richard said. "It would be a miracle."
photo: AP
Chaos started as thousands of citizens swarmed the area and authorities were looking to restore peace, with stone and wood planks being thrown back and forth. Some locals helped by guiding firehoses in the crowds.
"I just saw the plane - it had been heading down and down," Gift Onibo, 23, said.
Another resident, Tunji Dawodu, stated, "I came out from the church around 3:30 pm when I heard a loud noise.
"I thought it was an explosion," he said. "Then there was a huge flame from the building where the plane has crashed into."
photo: AP
Some residents said it appeared that airplane had nose-dived towards the neighbourhood while some described it as swaying back and forth just before it crashed.
photo: REUTERS
"It was waving, waving, waving," Yusuf Babatunde, 26, said at the area. "The pilot was finding it hard to control it. It crashed - it just started burning."
Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority Harold Denuren said that all of the passengers on Sunday's Dana Air flight died. He didn't point out total number of people were on the flight.
The Lagos local government said in an announcement that 153 people were on the plane heading from Abuja to Lagos.
President Goodluck Jonathan announced 3 days of national mourning for victims on the crash and pledged an investigation as rescuers rushed to pull out survivors in the neighbourhood close to the airport.
Yushau Shuaib, spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency, claimed that there were likely more deaths on the ground, however the number was not known.
He said that they were also still seeking to get an official manifest on the flight. There are times when flights in Nigeria issue paper tickets and do not list all passengers via computer.
The aircraft didn't seem to have nose-dived to a building, but appeared to have landed on its belly. It first crashed through a furniture store and then through the houses next to the workshop in this densely packed neighbourhood.
The nose of the airplane had been embedded in the 3-story apartment building, damaging just a portion of the structure. Flames still smoldered everywhere as thousands of people are witnessing. A bunch of men stood on top of the landing gear that was smoking and took photos using their cellular phones.
Richard said he was watching a movie when he heard a loud explosion that sounded just like a bomb. He hurried outside and found massive smoke and fires rising in the crash site around 3:45 in the afternoon.
At the crash site, an Associated Press news reporter observed parts of the plane's seat signs scattered around. Firefighters tried to stop the smoldering flames of the jet engine and brought a corpse from the building that continued to fall apart.
Two fire trucks and about 50 rescuers had been at the actual site immediately after the Dana Air aircraft went down. Some of the people gathered within the crash site assisted the firefighters carry in the water hoses from their trucks.
A Nigerian Red Cross came, along with Nigeria's air crash safety investigators.
A military helicopter flew overhead. The sound of the people was also occasionally punctuated by the sound of the aircraft still landing at the airport terminal of Lagos.
Lagos' international airport is known as a major hub for West Africa and observed 2.3 million travellers pass through it in 2009, based on the latest statistics given by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
In August 2010, the United States (US) announced it had given Nigeria the FAA's Category 1 status, its top safety rating which allows the country's local airlines to travel directly to the US.
The Nigerian government announced that it also presently has full radar coverage of the entire country. But unfortunately, in a nation where the government-run electric corporation is in tatters, state power and diesel-powered generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.
The presidency said in an announcement that the plane crash "has sadly plunged the country into further sorrow on a day when Nigerians had been currently in grief over the death of many innocent lives during the church bombing in Bauchi state."
A suicide car bomber drove into a north Nigeria church's compound Sunday and detonated his explosives as worshippers left an early morning service, killing at least 8 people and hurting dozens more, officials and witnesses said.
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