Relatives of the 103 people killed in a plane crash in Nigeria yesterday crowded hospital mortuaries seeking the bodies of their loved ones this morning.
The Sosoliso Airlines flight on its way from the capital Abuja to the southern oil city of Port Harcourt crashed during a storm and burst into flames at the airport, killing all but seven of the people on board.
More than 50 of the people on board were schoolchildren from a Catholic college in Abuja on their way home for the Christmas break, according to the Abuja archbishop's secretary. Also among the people who died in the crash were a Frenchman and an American woman working for the relief organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the head of mission for MSF France in Nigeria said.
There are confusing reports about what exactly happened to the DC9 aircraft as it was trying to land. Civil aviation officials said it missed the runway, but witnesses said they saw it land on the tarmac and break into pieces. There was no official word on the cause of the crash.
Seven weeks ago a plane operated by Bellview, another Nigerian airline, crashed near the commercial capital Lagos killing all 117 people on board. The cause of that crash has not been established.
Information Minister Frank Nweke said that Sosoliso was generally viewed as safe and, as far as he knew, had an accident-free record. President Olusegun Obasanjo said just after the Bellview crash in October that Nigeria would "plug loopholes" in its aviation sector and strengthen compliance with maintenance standards.
Sosoliso flies many domestic routes and is one of only two Nigerian airlines that operate on the busy Abuja-Port Harcourt route.
The aviation industry of Africa's most populous country has grown dramatically in the past decade, but has been struck by a series of fatal air crashes. An inquiry is under way into the Bellview crash but there is no word yet on the cause and investigators have not found the voice or flight data recorders.
Experts say most of the country's commercial fleet is over 20 years old and second hand, while runways are often closed because of poor maintenance. It is not uncommon for planes to take off and land in torrential rain.