Nigerian crash death toll rises

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria – Investigators picked over the scorched wreckage of an airliner that was ferrying schoolchildren home for the holidays when it crashed, killing 107 people on board in Nigeria’s latest air disaster.

The cause of the crash was still unknown a day after the Sosoliso Airlines’ McDonnell Douglas DC-9 slammed into the ground on approach to the southern oil-industry center of Port Harcourt. The plane was carrying 110 people, including 71 teenagers from Abuja.Only seven survivors were found Saturday, but state television reported Sunday that four died later, raising the death toll to 107.It was the second major air accident in seven weeks in Africa’s most-populous nation, and President Olusegun Obasanjo promised Sunday to overhaul Nigeria’s civil-aviation structures.Airport officials directed frantic family members to local morgues.At one hospital, bodies were heaped together due to lack of capacity.One survivor lay swaddled in bandages at a hospital’s intensive care unit, with only her toes, face and neck visible, all severely burned in the fiery accident.The charred wreckage lay in two principal parts several hundred metres apart, with investigators picking through the pieces.Aviation Ministry official Tommy Oyelade said the plane’s flight-data recorders, or so-called black boxes, had been recovered and would be examined.Obasanjo canceled a visit to Portugal, scheduled to have begun on Sunday, and said he would meet urgently with the country’s airline operators over “much-needed reforms in Nigeria’s aviation industry,” presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo said.Established in 1994, Nigerian-owned Sosoliso began scheduled flights as a domestic airline in July 2000 and now flies to six Nigerian cities.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.Nigerian airports have come under criticism in recent months following a string of near-misses and an incident in which an Air France passenger jet crashed into a herd of cows on the runway at Port Harcourt.International airlines briefly suspended flights at Lagos’ international airport because of holes in the runway.-Nampa-APThe plane was carrying 110 people, including 71 teenagers from Abuja.Only seven survivors were found Saturday, but state television reported Sunday that four died later, raising the death toll to 107.It was the second major air accident in seven weeks in Africa’s most-populous nation, and President Olusegun Obasanjo promised Sunday to overhaul Nigeria’s civil-aviation structures.Airport officials directed frantic family members to local morgues.At one hospital, bodies were heaped together due to lack of capacity.One survivor lay swaddled in bandages at a hospital’s intensive care unit, with only her toes, face and neck visible, all severely burned in the fiery accident.The charred wreckage lay in two principal parts several hundred metres apart, with investigators picking through the pieces.Aviation Ministry official Tommy Oyelade said the plane’s flight-data recorders, or so-called black boxes, had been recovered and would be examined.Obasanjo canceled a visit to Portugal, scheduled to have begun on Sunday, and said he would meet urgently with the country’s airline operators over “much-needed reforms in Nigeria’s aviation industry,” presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo said.Established in 1994, Nigerian-owned Sosoliso began scheduled flights as a domestic airline in July 2000 and now flies to six Nigerian cities.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.Nigerian airports have come under criticism in recent months following a string of near-misses and an incident in which an Air France passenger jet crashed into a herd of cows on the runway at Port Harcourt.International airlines briefly suspended flights at Lagos’ international airport because of holes in the runway.-Nampa-AP