A passenger plane carrying 114 people crashed after taking off from Lagos in Nigeria. There was no immediate indication the crash was terrorism-related. State radio reported that several high ranking government officials were on the plane, but did not name them. Abilola Oloko, a spokesman for the Oyo state, where the plane crashed late Saturday said no one survived the crash. Abilola Oloko, a spokesman for Oyo state where the plane crashed, had said earlier that over half of those on board had survived. He later asserted that “the latest reports coming to us say that all the people on the plane died.” He cited confusion at the crash scene for the conflicting reports. “There were no traces of any survivors. The rescuers saw charred bodies,” Red Cross General Secretary Abiodun Orebiyi told Reuters. “The plane was destroyed. It was scattered everywhere. I was not told there were any survivors,” he said. Pilots issued a distress call before the plane disappeared from radar about 24 kilometers south of Lagos over the Atlantic ocean, state television reported. Most aircraft take off from Lagos in the direction of the Atlantic and turn back towards the coast. Lagos police spokesman Bode Ojajuni said search teams located the downed Boeing 737 aircraft, operated by Nigerian-run Bellview Airlines, near the town of Kishi, about 200 km north of Lagos. The plane lost contact with the control tower five minutes after taking off at 8:45 p.m. (1.15 IST) yesterday, said Jide Ibinola, a spokesman for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria. The flight is popular among Nigerians and expatriates shuttling between Lagos and the capital, Abuja. Ibinola said the craft was headed to Abuja, on what was to have been a 50-minute flight. “There has been an announcement to ask all medical personnel to proceed to the crash scene, if they can,’’ Oloko said. President Olusegun Obasanjo’s office said in a statement that the leader was personally overseeing search and rescue operations and that he was ‘‘asking all Nigerians to pray for all those aboard the plane and their families.’’ Bellview, one of about a dozen local airlines plying Nigeria’s skies, is a privately owned Nigerian company that operates a fleet of mostly Boeing 737s on internal routes and throughout West Africa.
