More Than 180 Killed after Jet Slams into Nigerian City

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, May 05, 2002

More Than 180 Killed after Jet Slams into Nigerian City

The death toll from the crash of a Nigerian airliner into a densely-populated city suburb mounted to more than 180 Sunday, rescuers said, as they combed through the blackened rubble of ruined homes.

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Plane Crashed in Northern Nigeria

The death toll from the crash of a Nigerian airliner into a densely-populated city suburb mounted to more than 180 Sunday, rescuers said, as they combed through the blackened rubble of ruined homes.

The twin-engined passenger jet crashed into an residential area of the northern city of Kano on Saturday afternoon shortly after taking off on a domestic flight towards Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos.

Hospital officials said that more than 100 people had died on board the plane, which exploded as it ploughed through the flimsy brick and iron sheeting of the Gammaja suburb.

At the scene, a group of vigilantes who took charge of the rescue effort, told AFP that after a powercut forced them to give up a night-time search for victims on the ground they had already found 83 bodies.

Ado Mohammed, one of the gang, said that the search would resume at first light and that many more bodies could yet be found.

Nigeria's sports minister, who had been travelling to see Nigeria's last warm-up match before the football World Cup finals, was among the dead, Kano health commissioner Mansur Kadir told AFP.

One survivor of the crash, identified only as an army brigadier-general, was in a critical condition, hospital officials said.

There was no official comment on the cause of the crash. The flight had begun in the central city of Jos and had made a stopover in Kano before taking off for Lagos, officials said.

"The people inside were screaming, but they were trapped and the fire brigade had no water," said local resident Bashir Mohammed, adding that the plane crashed at around 1^"I was standing in front of my house when I saw the plane ascending and swaying from side to side," said Maikudi Ismae'il, who lives in Gwammaja and tried to rescue passengers.

"As I moved to get a better view, it went into a nose dive. First its wings burst into flames then it crashed into houses," he told AFP.

Witnesses said that many people were at home on Saturday afternoon, the Islamic day of rest in this largely Muslim city.

"We commiserate with the relatives and the victims, of course, but we cannot comment any further. It is matter for the aviation authorities," a spokesman for Kano's state government told AFP.

Officials said that the plane was operated by the private Nigerian airline EAS, which runs a regular service between Lagos, Kano and several other Nigerian cities.

EAS operates a fleet of four British Aerospace 1-11-500 twin-engined passenger jets, capable of carrying up to 96 passengers plus crew.

The Nigerian airline industry was deregulated in the 1980s and more than half a dozen private carriers now criss-cross the skies of the large west African republic.

Many passengers have criticised what they see as lax safety standards in the industry, and some foreign embassies and companies forbid their staff from flying with Nigerian firms.

"We have serious safety concerns about many of the Nigerian airlines, and our staff are not allowed to travel on them," a European diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Nigeria's last major air disaster was in November 1996, when a Boeing 727 operated by ADC airlines lost control on its descent into Lagos airport and crashed, killing 143 people on board.

The worst ever Nigerian plane accident was also at Kano.

In January 1973, a chartered Boeing 707 carrying pilgrims back from Mecca skidded off the runway and caught fire, killing 176.

Since 1996, a series of more minor accidents to flights at airports around Nigeria killed eight people.

Kano is a large city of around two million people in the arid far north of Nigeria.

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