Nigerian plane crashed into mosques, houses

An airliner with up to 105 people on board slammed into mosques and houses in a crowded working-class neighbourhood of Nigeria’s northern city of Kano today, and burst into flames.

Terrified, screaming and weeping residents carried bodies from the plane’s shattered parts and the rubble of dozens of building.

At least one of the dead had been a resident - a baby girl, whose scorched body was carried out wrapped in a yellow rug. Her mother walked alongside, wailing.

One resident said he helped pull a survivor, who had bone jutting out of his forehead, from the plane.

There were no other immediate reports of survivors, and no word on the number of casualties among those on the ground or in the plane.

The plane, belonging to Nigeria’s private EAS Airlines, had taken off from Kano for Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos, 435 miles to the south, private radio reports said.

The aircraft crashed about a half-mile from the airport.

Resident Umar Suleman said he saw the plane ‘‘wobbling’’ in the seconds before the crash.

Terrified residents fled just before the plane smashed into two mosques and other buildings, ripping the roof entirely off one structure. The plane burst into flames.

‘‘I was very afraid,’’ said resident Ibrahim Amadou, 60.

Amadou said he was inside reading the Koran when the tail of the plane shattered the corner of his house. For frightened minutes after, he said, ‘‘I was just praying to God’’.

Residents tried to give help. Suleman said he found one man still sitting on a seat in the plane, ‘‘his forehead broken’’, with bone jutting out.

The man was alive. Suleman said he helped him from the rubble.

Distraught residents were doing most of the searching themselves. Rescue workers, some with heavy machinery, helped clear the rubble and look for bodies.

Residents said they were worried especially for any neighbours who might have been inside the mosques, praying, when the plane hit.

Northern Nigeria is heavily Islamic.

Kano State Governor Rabiu Isa Kuamkwaso visited the scene of the crash tonight, adding to confusion at the scene, as residents pushed to talk to him and were pushed back by security.