U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Mark Toner leads the Daily Press Briefing at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. June 4, 2012 (LAGOS, Nigeria) -- Police dogs sniffed for dead bodies Monday in the rubble of buildings destroyed when an airliner crashed into them, killing all 153 aboard, as cranes lifted away heavy pieces of debris in the grisly aftermath of Nigeria's worst air disaster in nearly two decades. Rescue officials said they fear many more people may have perished on the ground. The airline involved said an investigation had begun into the cause of Sunday's crash.
Plane crash in Nigeria kills more than 150 on board
Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority Harold Demuren said that all aboard today's Dana Air flight had died. He did not say how many were on the flight.
The Lagos state government said in a statement that 153 people were on the flight going from Abuja to Lagos. Yushau Shuaib, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, said there were likely more casualties on the ground, but the number was unknown. He said they were also still trying to get an official manifest on the flight. Sometimes flights in Nigeria issue paper tickets and don't record all passengers via computer.
The plane did not to appear to have nose-dived into a building, but seemed to have landed on its belly. It first crashed through a furniture shop and then into residential buildings next to the workshop in this densely packed neighborhood.
The nose of the plane was embedded into the three-story apartment building, damaging only one part of the structure. Fire still smoldered everywhere as several thousand people looked on. A group of men stood atop the landing gear that was smoking and took pictures with their mobile phones.
Praise Richard, a witness, said he was watching a film when he heard a loud explosion that sounded like a bomb. He rushed outside and saw massive smoke and flames rising from the crash site around 3:45 p.m. At the crash site, an Associated Press reporter saw parts of the plane's seat signs scattered around. Firefighters tried to put out the smoldering flames of a jet engine and carried at least one corpse from the building that continued to crumble. Two fire trucks and about 50 rescue personnel were at the site after the plane went down. Some of those gathered around the site helped firefighters bring in the water hoses from their trucks.
The Nigerian Red Cross arrived, as well as Nigeria's air crash safety investigators.
It was not immediately known what type of plane this was, but Dana Air's website says that the company operates its Lagos to Abuja and Abuja to Lagos flights using a Boeing MD83 aircraft. A military helicopter flew overhead. The sound of the crowd was also occasionally punctuated by the noise of aircraft still landing at the airport.
Lagos' international airport is a major hub for West Africa and saw 2.3 million passengers pass through it in 2009, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
In August 2010, the U.S. announced it had given Nigeria the FAA's Category 1 status, its top safety rating that allows the nation's domestic carriers to fly directly to the U.S. The Nigerian government said it also now has full radar coverage of the entire nation. However, in a nation where the state-run electricity company is in tatters, state power and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.
The presidency said in a statement the crash "has sadly plunged the nation into further sorrow on a day when Nigerians were already in grief over the loss of many other innocent lives in the church bombing in Bauchi state."
A suicide car bomber drove into a north Nigeria church's compound today and detonated his explosives as worshippers left an early morning service, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.
Real Shocking Crimes caught on camera: "Warning Graphic."
What your mainstream media never tell you: Marvel at the al-Jazeera film crew whipping the crowd to hysteria. This is what most UK/american mainstream media do ; get the crowds TO ACT for the cameras. Ever noticed the STAGED gun shots or in-the-lens chanting? It's all fake, staged propaganda for the liars at Sky/ITN/BBC?CNN/Fox. اسامہ بن لادن ہلاکओसामा बिन लादेन को मार डाला قتل أسامة بن لادن Oussama Ben Laden tué Osama Bin Laden getötet Usama bin Ladin dödas DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants. The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
