117 killed as Nigerian plane crashes after take-off

ALL 117 people died on board an airliner when it crashed shortly after take-off in Nigeria, it emerged yesterday.

Abilola Oloko, a spokesman for Oyo state where the plane came down on Saturday, had earlier raised hopes that more than half of those on board had survived. However, he later asserted that “the latest reports coming to us say that all the people on the plane died.”

He blamed confusion at the crash scene for the conflicting reports.

Lagos police spokesman Bode Ojajuni said search teams located the crashed Boeing 737 aircraft, operated by Nigerian-run Bellview Airlines, near the town of Kishi, about 120 miles north of the city of Lagos, from where the plane took off.

The plane lost contact with the control tower five minutes after taking off from Murtala Muhammed international airport in Lagos, said Jide Ibinola, a spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria. There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash or if flight-data recorders had been located.

Airline officials said 117 people were on board - 111 passengers and six crew. Ibinola said the craft was headed to Abuja on what was supposed to have been a 50-minute flight. There was no immediate indication the crash was terrorism-related.

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s office said in a statement the leader was personally overseeing search and rescue operations. The Nigerian leader - grieving for his wife who died early Sunday after a surgical procedure in Spain - asked “all Nigerians to pray for all those aboard the plane and their families”.

Officials said earlier that the military had mounted a helicopter search off the West African coast as state television reported that pilots issued a distress call before the plane disappeared from radar about 15 miles west of Lagos over the Atlantic Ocean. There was no explanation for why the wreckage was found inland.

Bellview, one of about a dozen local airlines plying Nigeria’s skies, is a privately owned Nigerian company that operates a fleet of mostly Boeing 737s on internal routes and throughout West Africa. Bellview began flying 10 years ago and has not suffered a crash before.