BNW

 

Biafra Nigeria World News & Archives

 

BNW News and Archives

 

 

BNW: the Authority on BiafraNigeria

BNW Magazine 

Biafra Nigeria World Forums and Message Board

 BNW News Archive

BNW Home

 

BNW Writer's Block

 WaZoBia @ BNW

Biafra Net

 Igbo Net

Africa World and BNW Africa 

Submit Article for Publication

BiafraNigeria Spacer

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

Flag of Biafra Nigeria

 

BNW News Archives

BNW News Archive 2002-January 2005

BNW News Archive 2005

BNW News Archive 2005 and Later

 

BiafraNigeriaWorld News: Weblogs Edition @ Blog Continent


« Nigeria jet crash leaves 103 dead | Main | Sosoliso Releases Manifest of Crash Victims »

December 12, 2005

Families seek Nigeria crash dead

Relatives of more than 100 people who died in a plane crash in Nigeria on Saturday have been gathering at mortuaries to try to identify victims.

More than 70 of those killed were pupils from a top secondary school.

The plane was travelling from the capital Abuja when it overshot the runway at Port Harcourt during a storm and burst into flames.

Investigators have begun sifting through the wreckage of the DC-9 and analysing the flight data recorders.

President Olusegun Obasanjo is to hold an emergency meeting with aviation officials to review air safety.

Clutching photographs, family members have been walking past badly burnt bodies laid out on the mortuary floor at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital.

The bodies, which were still identifiable, had been sprinkled with disinfectant and tagged with numbers, in a room with no refrigeration or air-conditioning.

"All we can do now is bury our dead and mourn," one man, among hundreds of wailing relatives at the mortuary, told Reuters news agency. "There is so much suffering here."

A Catholic Archbishop, John Onaiyekan of Abuja, said 71 pupils from Abuja's Ignatius Loyola Jesuit College died in the crash. Four others had got off the plane during a scheduled stopover in another city, he said.

Many of the pupils' families had been at Port Harcourt's airport to collect their children and witnessed the crash.

"So you can imagine the great trauma for the parents watching their own children just roasting there in the air crash," he told news agency AFP.

"It's a great tragedy for the school."

The fee-paying boarding school has 600 pupils and is one of Nigeria's most highly-rated schools.

The victims also included a French and a US national working for aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.

'Deeply saddened'

The privately-run Sosoliso Airlines, which owned the plane, went into operation as a domestic airline in 2000 and now flies to six Nigerian cities.

The president, said to be deeply saddened by the accident, has cancelled a visit to Portugal to deal with the air disaster, Nigeria's second in less than two months, and review air traffic safety.

Correspondents say several Nigerian airports have come under criticism in recent months following a string of accidents and near-misses.

A Boeing 737 aircraft crashed in October shortly after take-off from the commercial capital Lagos, killing all 117 people on board.

The flight recorders from that plane were never found.

President Obasanjo had instructed his aviation minister to plug any loopholes to ensure airline safety.

Posted by Publisher at December 12, 2005 08:20 AM

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?





BNW Writers A-M


BNW Writers N-Z

 

BiafraNigeria Banner

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BiafraNigeria Spacer

BiafraNigeria Spacer

 

BNW Forums

 

The Voice of a New Generation