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| Rescue workers search the site where a Bellview
Airlines plane crashed, in the village of Lissa in the Ifo district,
southwest 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 and 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 biggest 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."
Confusion reigned for hours after the disaster, reflecting sometimes
inefficient government in this West African nation of 130 million people
and its freewheeling air transport system in which a dozen local airlines
fly from chaotic airports where crowds fight over seats in planes.
Abilola Oloko, spokesman for Oyo state, where the Bellview Airlines jet
went down, initially reported that more than half those on the doomed
plane had survived. But he reversed himself a few hours later, blaming
chaos at the crash scene for conflicting reports.
There also was confusion about the crash site itself.
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.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2005-10-24 10:48
