Accident investigators sifted through the wreckage of a Nigerian airliner yesterday, searching for the cause of a plane crash that killed 103, including dozens of schoolchildren heading home for the holidays.
The Saturday crash of the Sosoliso Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9, carrying 110 passengers and crew between the capital, Abuja, and the southern oil-industry center of Port Harcourt, was the second major air accident in seven weeks in Africa's most populous nation.
Rescue workers pulled seven survivors from the stricken aircraft, still lying on the runway yesterday. The twisted, charred wreckage lay in two principal parts several hundred meters apart, with investigators picking through the pieces.
Airport officials directed frantic family members to local morgues. At one overwhelmed hospital, bodies were heaped together due to lack of capacity.
Some 75 schoolchildren from a Jesuit school in Abuja were on board, with the pupils heading back home for Christmas. All were between the ages of 12 and 16, family members said.
Sam Adurogboye, spokesman for the National Civil Aviation Authority, said the weather had been stormy around the airport at the time of the crash, and witnesses said they saw lightning as the plane approached the runway. He said seven crew members were on board.
Information Minister Frank Nweke said yesterday on state-owned Radio Nigeria that the government expected aviation accident investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
"The only information we have now is that the weather was inclement. The government will like to allow the experts to look into the crash and come up with the cause," Nweke said.
The minister said President Olusegun Obasanjo was "deeply saddened" by news of the crash.
Established in 1994, Nigerian-owned Sosoliso began scheduled flights as a domestic airline in July 2000 and now flies to six Nigerian cities, according to its Web site. The Port Harcourt crash is the first recorded by the airline.
Sosoliso spokesman Simbo Olorufemi in Lagos would not comment on details of the crash beyond confirming it had occurred and saying: "Most of the passengers might have lost their lives."
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