BREAKING NEWS: NIGERIA

Nigeria Plane Crash – A passenger plane Dana Air flight, carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria’s largest city-Lagos, killing all passengers  on-board, an emergency official said, AFP reports.

People gather at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Sunday, June 3, 2012. (AP / Sunday Alamba).

Several charred corpses could be seen in the rubble of a building damaged by the Nigerian plane crash, as firefighters searched for survivors and pulled a dead  body from the wreckage on Sunday (local time).

Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority Harold Denuren said that all the passengers on Sunday’s Dana Air flight died. He did not say how many were on the flight.

The Lagos state government said in a statement that 153 people were on the flight going from Abuja to Lagos.

• “Related: Ghana Plane Crash: Minister inaugrates fact finding, Atta Mills visits accident scene”  

Yushau Shuaib, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, said there were likely more casualties on the ground, but the number was unknown. He said they were also still trying to get an official manifest on the flight. Sometimes flights in Nigeria issue paper tickets and don’t record all passengers via computer.

The plane did not to appear to have nose-dived into a building, but seemed to have landed on its belly. It first crashed through a furniture shop and then into residential buildings next to the workshop in this densely packed neighborhood.

The nose of the plane was embedded into the three-story apartment building, damaging only one part of the structure. Fire still smoldered everywhere as several thousand people looked on. A group of men stood atop the landing gear that was smoking and took pictures with their mobile phones.

“I don’t think there will be any survivors,” said witness Praise Richard. “It would take a miracle.”

Richard said he was watching a film when he heard a loud explosion that sounded like a bomb. He rushed outside and saw massive smoke and flames rising from the crash site around 3:45pm.

At the crash site, an Associated Press reporter saw parts of the plane’s seat signs scattered around. Firefighters tried to put out the smoldering flames of a jet engine and carried at least one corpse from the building that continued to crumble.

Two fire trucks and about 50 rescue personnel were at the site after the plane went down. Some of those gathered around the site helped firefighters bring in the water hoses from their trucks.

The Nigerian Red Cross arrived, as well as Nigeria’s air crash safety investigators.

A military helicopter flew overhead. The sound of the crowd was also occasionally punctuated by the noise of aircraft still landing at the airport.

Lagos’ international airport is a major hub for West Africa and saw 2.3 million passengers pass through it in 2009, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.

In August 2010, the US announced it had given Nigeria the FAA’s Category 1 status, its top safety rating that allows the nation’s domestic carriers to fly directly to the US.

The Nigerian government said it also now has full radar coverage of the entire nation. However, in a nation where the state-run electricity company is in tatters, state power and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.

The presidency said in a statement the crash “has sadly plunged the nation into further sorrow on a day when Nigerians were already in grief over the loss of many other innocent lives in 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 eight people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.

The Nigeria plane crash is probably the biggest tragedy to befall Nigeria this year, killing all passengers aboard, not to mention those in the two storey building and surroundings it crashed into. Meanwhile, just yesterday in Ghana, an Allied Air of Nigeria cargo plane carrying DHL cargoes crashlanded at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra yesterday killing 10 bus passengers on the ground.

May the lives of those lost in the two plane crash tragedy rest in perfect peace. However, the Nigerian government has some explaining to do, and ought to compensate the families of the deceased accordingly.

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Partly culled from AFP