Posted by Sun Times on
Four people died after being pulled from the wreckage of a Nigerian jetliner that crashed while landing in a storm, state television said Sunday, raising the number killed to 107, most of them schoolchildren coming home for Christmas.
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria -- Four people died after being pulled from the wreckage of a Nigerian jetliner that crashed while landing in a storm, state television said Sunday, raising the number killed to 107, most of them schoolchildren coming home for Christmas.
The victims included an American aid worker.
Airport officials directed frantic family members to morgues in this southern oil center as a Roman Catholic cleric in Abuja said 71 schoolchildren from that city's Jesuit school died in Saturday's crash of the Sosoliso Airlines DC-9.
At one overwhelmed hospital, bodies were piled together because of a lack of room.
'Much-needed reforms'
Rescue workers pulled seven survivors from the burning aircraft, but state TV reported that four later died. The plane's twisted, charred wreckage lay in two parts as investigators picked through the pieces.
President Olusegun Obasanjo canceled a visit to Portugal and said he would meet with the country's airline operators to discuss "much-needed reforms in Nigeria's aviation industry," presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo said in a statement. The crash was the second major air disaster in seven weeks in Africa's most populous nation.
AP