All 117 people aboard Nigeria plane die

LAGOS - All 117 people on board a Nigerian airliner died when the Boeing 737 crashed and disintegrated in flames shortly after take-off from Lagos airport, the government confirmed today.


Dismembered and burned body parts, fuselage fragments and engine parts were strewn over an area the size of a football field near the village of Lissa, about 30km north of Lagos.


"The Federal Government announces with regret the unfortunate air crash of Bellview Airlines ... which resulted in the loss of life of all passengers and crew on board," a government statement released late on Sunday local time said.


A senior police official at the scene said: "The aircraft has crashed and it is a total loss. We can't even see a whole human body."


Bellview Airlines flight 210 took off at 8.45pm (10am Sunday NZT) on Saturday and lost contact with the control tower minutes later during a heavy electrical storm.

Authorities located the wreckage of the Boeing 737-200 airliner in Kishi, Oyo state, in southwestern Nigeria about 200 km north of Lagos, a police source said about 12 hours later.

"The government has been able to confirm that Bellview flight 210 may have gone down, thereby confirming our worst fears," Information Minister Frank Nweke told state radio earlier.

Emergency services launched a search and rescue mission.

The plane was carrying 117 people: 110 passengers and six crew, authorities said.

Initially, it was not known whether the plane had crashed, been hijacked or had made an emergency landing.

But the pilot made a distress call minutes after take-off on Saturday, indicating the plane had a technical problem, a source at the presidency told Reuters.

Missing

State radio reported that several high ranking government officials were on the plane, but did not name them.

The privately owned Nigerian airline is popular with expatriates. Western diplomats feared several of their citizens could also have been on board.

Dozens of flights run each day between the port of Lagos -- one of the world's biggest cities -- and Abuja in the heart of Africa's most populous nation.

Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier told CNN by telephone from Seattle the company would work with the US National Transportation Safety Board if the board were asked to help with any investigation.

She said the 737 was the "workhorse of the world commercial jet fleet".

Bellview Airlines could not confirm the airliner had crashed 11 hours after it disappeared and concerned relatives at Lagos airport grew impatient with the lack of information.

"I am worried because nobody is talking to me," said Samuel Ojeikedion.

A group of about 10 men and women sang prayers for missing relatives in the deserted airport building.

More than 140 people died in May 2002 when a Nigerian airliner slammed into a poor suburb in the northern city of Kano, killing people on board and on the ground. The aircraft plowed into about 10 buildings shortly after take-off.

- REUTERS