Lagos (Nigeria): A Nigerian plane crashed during a storm at Port Harcourt airport on Saturday, killing 103 people including 65 school children on their way home for the Christmas break.
The plane, a DC9 operated by Nigerian airline Sosoliso on its way from the Capital Abuja to the oil city in the southern Niger Delta, crash-landed, broke into pieces and burst into flames, witnesses said.
"I was at the helipad when the plane came in. There was thunder. I saw the plane break into three and then fire engulfed it and it started burning," said an airport worker.
Seven of the 110 people on board survived the crash.
A mother awaiting news of her child said 75 of those on board were high-school students from the Loyola Jesuit College in the capital Abuja. She said the school had told her this.
Emmanuel Unamba, secretary to the Catholic archbishop of Abuja, said he had received news that more than 50 students from the school were on the plane. He said they were going home to their parents because the Christmas break started on Saturday.
Hundreds of parents and relatives wept in the chaotic airport terminal, where little information was available.
"I can't find my child. I can't see his corpse. Nobody is talking to me. Please give me my child," wailed one woman as she sobbed and clutched at passing airport workers.
Second major crash in seven weeks
Seven weeks ago a plane operated by Bellview, another Nigerian airline, crashed near the commercial Capital Lagos killing 117 people on board. The cause of that crash has not been established.
Civil aviation officials said that the Sosoliso flight missed the airport runway, though two eyewitnesses said they saw it land on the tarmac. It was not clear exactly what had happened and police stopped reporters from getting close to the wreckage.
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On board were 103 passengers and seven crew. Officials said 60 bodies were recovered in daylight hours.
A dozen ambulances were speeding up and down the runway, taking dead bodies covered in sheets to hospitals and mortuaries.
"It's another national tragedy," Information Minister Frank Nweke said on NTA state television.
He said that Sosoliso was generally viewed as safe and, as far as he knew, had an accident-free record.
President Olusegun Obasanjo said just after the Bellview crash in October that Nigeria would "plug loopholes" in its aviation sector and strengthen compliance with maintenance standards.
Investigators from the aviation ministry were on their way to the Port Harcourt crash site on Saturday evening, officials said, adding the airport was closed to all flights.
Sosoliso flies many domestic routes and is one of only two Nigerian airlines that operate on the busy Abuja-Port Harcourt route.
The aviation industry of Africa's most populous country has grown dramatically in the past decade, but has been struck by a series of fatal air crashes.
An inquiry is under way into the Bellview crash but there is no word yet on the cause and investigators have not found the voice or flight data recorders.
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