Sunday’s air crash a “national calamity”—Says Goodluck
--as nigeria observes 3 days mourning
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has described as a “national calamity,” the crash of the Dana airline plane, which killed some 146 passengers and 7 crew members in the commercial capital, Lagos on Sunday.
Three days of national mourning have been declared in Nigeria for the 153 people on board who lost their lives and others on the ground whose number yet to be established.
A statement released by the Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati declaring the three days of national mourning, said the President has put his June 4 schedule on whole as a mark of honour for the departed souls.
He further ordered the country’s flag to be flown at half mast, saying that the Aviation Ministry should carry out a scrupulous investigation to forestall further occurrence.
The immediate cause of Sunday’s Dana air crash is not known. The plane plunged into a printing press and adjacent buildings near Lagos international airport.
But as WADR’s Abuja correspondent reports, President Jonathan’s office says “airline operators in the country must be made to adhere to air traffic rules to guarantee air safety.”
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Meanwhile, it’s not yet known how many persons on the ground were killed when the Dana airliner came down in the densely populated Iju-Ishaga Abgado area of Lagos.
But a report carried by THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY TODAY quotes Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority as saying that more than 30 people on the ground were killed in the disaster.
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