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Spiritual leader of Muslims dies in Nigerian plane crash
ABUJA - A Nigerian airliner carrying 104 people, including the man regarded as a spiritual leader of Muslims in Nigeria, crashed in a storm yesterday after taking off from the airport in Abuja. Most of those on board were feared dead, but at least six people survived.
The Sunni leader was among the dead, local radio reported.
Debris from the shattered plane, body parts and personal belongings were strewn over a wooded area the size of a soccer field about three kilometres from the end of the runway at the airport in the capital of the oil-rich West African country.
Smoke rose from the plane's mangled and smouldering fuselage as rescue workers pulled out burned corpses. About 50 bodies were gathered in a corner of the site. The tail of the plane was hanging from a tree.
State radio reported the Boeing 727 was en route to the northwestern city of Sokoto when it crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport in Abuja during a storm.
Ibrahim Farinloye, spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, said the plane carried 104 passengers and crew members. Speaking at the crash site, he said "six survivors have been evacuated to hospital." He did not comment on the fate of other passengers.
A local radio station, Ray Power FM, reported the plane was owned by Aviation Development Co., a private Nigerian airline.
The sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, was among those on board, according to Mustapha Shehu, spokesperson for the Sokoto state government.
Maccido is the head of the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, which announces when Muslim fasts should begin and end and decides policy issues for Nigeria's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.
Shehu said the sultan's son, Muhammed Maccido, a senator, also was on the flight, along with Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former Nigerian president Shehu Shagari, who was in office between 1979 and 1983.
About half of Nigeria's 130 million people are Muslims. The country is the most populous in Africa and the continent's leading oil exporter.
At the airport in Abuja, security officials tried to contain a crush of people seeking information about friends or family aboard the plane.
President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation into the crash, his spokesperson Remi Oyo said in a statement.
Oyo said Obasanjo was "deeply and profoundly shocked and saddened . . . He offers condolences for all Nigerians, especially family, friends and associates of those who may have been on board."
The Nigerian airline ADC last suffered a crash in November 1996, when one of its jets plunged into a lagoon outside Nigeria's main city, Lagos, killing all 143 aboard.
Last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other, killing 224 people.
On Oct. 22, 2005, a Boeing 737-200 plane belonging to Bellview airlines crashed soon after takeoff from Lagos, killing all 117 people aboard. On Dec. 10, 2005, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 plane operated by Sosoliso Airlines crashed while approaching the oil city of Port Harcourt, killing 107 people, most of them schoolchildren going home for Christmas.
Earlier this month, authorities released a report blaming the Sosoliso crash on bad weather and pilot error. The investigation of the Bellview crash continues.

Source: London Free Press

Blog MyyyyyAsssss sends along deepest condolences to the other 103 people killed in this plane crash, but if this individual was an islamic terrorist we cannot feel too badly. "It was either him or us."

If, in fact, this man was not and did not consider me an infidel, then I am indeed saddened by his passing.