Families seek bodies of Nigeria plane crash victims

By Austin Ekeinde

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) – Relatives clutching
photographs crowded hospital mortuaries in Port Harcourt in
Nigeria on Sunday, searching for loved ones among the 103
killed in a fiery plane crash on Saturday.

The Sosoliso Airlines flight on its way from the capital
Abuja to the southern oil city 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
organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the head of
mission for MSF France in Nigeria said.

At the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, about
20 badly burned bodies were laid out on the dirt floor of the
mortuary, a room with no refrigeration or air-conditioning.

Hospital staff sprinkled disinfectant on the bodies, most
of whom were recognisable, and tagged them with numbers.

“All we can do now is bury our dead and mourn. There is so
much suffering here,” said one man among hundreds of relatives
who were weeping and wailing at the mortuary.

Many were holding photographs of their dead relatives.

At first hospital authorities said they could not release
any bodies until full identification had been carried out, but
the governor of Rivers state, where Port Harcourt is located,
visited the hospital and ordered they should be released.

One of the survivors, a woman, was being treated in a ward
in the same hospital. Most of her body was covered in bandages
and her face looked badly burned.

NO WORD ON CAUSE

On Saturday, confusing reports emerged 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.

Information Minister Frank Nweke said on Saturday that
Sosoliso was generally viewed as safe and, as far as he knew,
had an accident-free record.

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 and the plane’s voice and flight data
recorders have not been found.

President Olusegun Obasanjo said just after the Bellview
crash that Nigeria would “plug loopholes” in its aviation
sector and strengthen compliance with maintenance standards.

Investigators from the aviation ministry were on their way
to the Port Harcourt crash site on Saturday evening, officials
said, adding the airport was closed to all flights.

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.

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.