Nearly 100 Dead In Nigerian Jet Crash

Nigeria suffered its third fatal air tragedy in less than a year Sunday when a jetliner with 104 people aboard slammed into the ground in a fiery crash just moments after lifting off from the airport in this West African nation's capital. Officials said six people survived and the rest were believed dead.

Government officials declined to give a final death toll, but among the confirmed fatalities was the man regarded as the spiritual leader of Nigeria's Muslims.

The Boeing 737 crashed at 10:29 a.m. local time, one minute after taking off from Abuja airport, said Sam Adurogboye, an Aviation Ministry spokesman. The cause was not known, but President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation, his spokeswoman Remi Oyo said in a statement.

Rescue workers racing to the scene found debris from the smashed plane, body parts and passengers' luggage strewn over an area the size of a soccer field. The plane went down in tree-filled field inside the sprawling airport compound about three kilometers (two miles) from the runway. Smoke rose from the aircraft's mangled and smoldering fuselage. It's tail, hanging from a tree, was one of the few recognizable parts.

Emergency workers pulled blackened corpses from what was left of the twisted wreckage. They covered the bodies with white sheets and hauled them away in stretchers. An AP reporter counted at least 50 cadavers, though other bodies had been transported earlier to local morgues.

Rescue efforts ended just after 5 p.m. Ibrahim Farinloye, a spokesman for the national emergency agency, said the next step would be getting family members to identify the dead.

Through the day, airport security officials kept back anxious, upset mobs of people seeking information about friends or loved ones.

Adurogboye said 104 passengers and crew had been aboard the doomed flight, and he knew of six survivors who had been taken to a hospital. "Obviously the rest are feared dead," he said.

The plane was bound for the northwest city of Sokoto, about 500 miles northwest of Abuja, state radio said, adding that it had gone down during a storm. Witnesses said there was a rainstorm around the time the aircraft took off, but rains later subsided, giving way to overcast skies.

In an announcement broadcast on state radio, the Sokoto state government announced the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, died in the crash. Maccido headed the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria. The body announces when Muslim fasts should begin and end, and decides issues of policy for Nigeria's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.

Maccido was immediately flown to Sokoto, where thousands of people were at the airport to receive the body.

Maccido was buried Sunday in accordance with Islamic custom. The Sokoto state government declared six days of mourning.

Mustapha Shehu, spokesman for the Sokoto state government, had said earlier that the sultan's son, Muhammed Maccido, a senator, was also aboard the flight, along with Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former Nigerian President Shehu Shagari, who was in office between 1979 and 1983. Their fates were not immediately clear.

About half of Nigeria's 130 million people are Muslims. The country is the most populous in Africa and the continent's leading oil exporter.

Oyo said Obasanjo was "deeply and profoundly shocked and saddened ... he condoles all Nigerians, especially family, friends and associates of those who may have been on board."

The 23-year-old aircraft, a Boeing 737-2B7 owned by Aviation Development Co., a private Nigerian airline, was manufactured in 1983, Adurogboye said. ADC last suffered a crash in November 1996, when one of its jets plunged into a lagoon outside Nigeria's main city, Lagos, killing all 143 aboard.

Nigeria's air industry is notoriously unsafe. Last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other, killing 224 people.

On Oct. 22, 2005 a Boeing 737-200 plane belonging to Bellview airlines crashed soon after takeoff from the country's main city of Lagos, killing all 117 people aboard. On Dec. 10, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 plane operated by Sosoliso Airlines crashed while approaching the oil city of Port Harcourt, killing 107 people, most of them school children going home for Christmas.

Earlier this month, authorities released a report blaming the Sosoliso crash on bad weather and pilot error. The investigation of the Bellview crash is still continuing.

After last year's air crashes, Obasanjo vowed to overhaul Nigeria's airline industry, blaming some of the industry's problems on corruption. Airlines were subjected to checks for air-worthiness and some planes considered unworthy were grounded.