LAGOS, Nigeria – Twisted chunks of metal, ripped luggage and mangled bodies turned a swath of woods into a grisly scene after a Nigerian passenger plane carrying 117 people crashed shortly after takeoff. Officials said Sunday that all aboard were feared dead.
Red Cross and government officials said search teams found no sign that anyone on the Boeing 737 survived when it plunged to earth Saturday night after leaving Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria.
“It was a very pitiable sight. The aircraft was partly submerged (in the ground) and broken into several pieces,” said Fidelis Onyenyiri, chief of the National Civil Aviation Authority. “There were similarly no survivors from what we saw.”
The State Department said one American was on the flight.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, grieving for his wife who died in Spain within hours of the crash, asked “all Nigerians to pray for all those aboard the plane and their families.”
Officials first said the pilots issued a distress call before the plane disappeared from radar while over the Atlantic Ocean about 15 miles west of Lagos and said helicopters were searching the sea for wreckage.
A police spokesman later reported that search teams located the crashed craft far inland, near Kishi, 120 miles north of Lagos. But Red Cross officials later said the wreck was found in a wooded area near Lissa, a small town 30 miles north of Lagos.
A local TV station, Africa Independent Television, broadcast video of villagers looking over charred wreckage of a white Boeing 737 in an uninhabited wooded area near Lissa.
The aircraft was in several pieces, and the sky-blue streaked logo of Bellview Airlines could be seen on the shattered tail. No rescue workers were visible in the footage.
There was no immediate indication of what caused the crash, but it was not thought to be terrorist-related.
“The weather was not too bad but there was lightning, and an airplane struck by lightning could lose total control,” said Onyenyiri. He said investigators were searching for the plane’s flight data recorders.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
