Nigerian airliner crashes with 117 aboard

LAGOS – Officials said yesterday that more than half of the 117 people on board a downed passenger jet survived the accident and urged all available nearby medical personnel to rush to the crash site in central Nigeria.

Abilola Oloko, a spokesman for Oyo state where the plane crashed late on Saturday, said “more than half of those on board survived”. “There has been an announcement to ask all medical personnel to proceed to the crash scene, if they can,” Oloko said.Lagos police Spokesman Bode Ojajuni said search teams located the downed Boeing 737 aircraft, operated by Nigerian-run Bellview Airlines, near the town of Kishi, about 200 kilometres north of the city of Lagos, from where the plane took off.The plane lost contact with the control tower five minutes after taking off from the international airport in Lagos at 8:45pm on Saturday, said Jide Ibinola, a spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria.The flight is popular among Nigerians and expatriates shuttling between Lagos and the capital, Abuja.Representatives of many countries gathered at the airport to find out if any of their citizens were on board the doomed flight.Each stressed it was a matter of routine and that they had no news themselves.Airline officials said 117 people were on board – 111 passengers and six crew members.Ibinola said the craft was headed to Abuja, on what was supposed to have been a 50-minute flight.There was no immediate indication the crash was terrorism-related.President Olusegun Obasanjo’s office said in a statement that the leader was personally overseeing search and rescue operations and that he was “asks all Nigerians to pray for all those aboard the plane and their families.”Bellview, one of about a dozen local airlines plying Nigeria’s skies, is a privately owned Nigerian company that operates a fleet of mostly Boeing 737s on internal routes and throughout West Africa.Bellview first began flying about 10 years ago and has not suffered a crash before.In May 2002, an EAS Airlines jet plowed into a heavily populated neighbourhood after takeoff at the airport outside the northern city of Kano, killing 154 people in the plane and on the ground.- Nampa-AP”There has been an announcement to ask all medical personnel to proceed to the crash scene, if they can,” Oloko said.Lagos police Spokesman Bode Ojajuni said search teams located the downed Boeing 737 aircraft, operated by Nigerian-run Bellview Airlines, near the town of Kishi, about 200 kilometres north of the city of Lagos, from where the plane took off.The plane lost contact with the control tower five minutes after taking off from the international airport in Lagos at 8:45pm on Saturday, said Jide Ibinola, a spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria.The flight is popular among Nigerians and expatriates shuttling between Lagos and the capital, Abuja.Representatives of many countries gathered at the airport to find out if any of their citizens were on board the doomed flight.Each stressed it was a matter of routine and that they had no news themselves.Airline officials said 117 people were on board – 111 passengers and six crew members.Ibinola said the craft was headed to Abuja, on what was supposed to have been a 50-minute flight.There was no immediate indication the crash was terrorism-related.President Olusegun Obasanjo’s office said in a statement that the leader was personally overseeing search and rescue operations and that he was “asks all Nigerians to pray for all those aboard the plane and their families.”Bellview, one of about a dozen local airlines plying Nigeria’s skies, is a privately owned Nigerian company that operates a fleet of mostly Boeing 737s on internal routes and throughout West Africa.Bellview first began flying about 10 years ago and has not suffered a crash before.In May 2002, an EAS Airlines jet plowed into a heavily populated neighbourhood after takeoff at the airport outside the northern city of Kano, killing 154 people in the plane and on the ground.- Nampa-AP