LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s president has declared three days of national mourning after a commercial airliner crashed Sunday in the country’s largest city.
The domestic airliner was flying from the capital, Abuja when it went down in a densely populated neighborhood of Lagos, killing all 153 people on board and others on the ground. The plane tore through roofs, sheared a mango tree and slammed into a woodworking studio, a printing press and at least two large apartment buildings in the neighborhood before stopping.
TheGrio:
Nigerian plane crashes, killing all 153 onboard
Firefighters and police struggled to put out the flames around the wreckage as thousands of people flocked to the crash site. Rescue officials have not been able to determine how many people on the ground may have been killed.
The cause of the crash has not been determined, but a military official says the plane’s pilots radioed the Lagos tower just before the crash, saying the plane had engine trouble.