Plane Carrying Nigeria Pilgrims Crashes; 261 Die

A DC-8 jetliner carrying Nigerian pilgrims and a mostly Canadian crew crashed in flames Thursday while attempting to make an emergency landing, witnesses said. There were no survivors among at least 261 people on board.

Bodies of the pilgrims were scattered across the Saudi desert after the plane nose-dived onto the tarmac and exploded shortly after takeoff, airport officials and the witnesses said.

The number of people aboard the plane was in dispute. The plane was leased from the Montreal-based carrier Nationair by a Nigerian company, Holdtrade, to carry the Muslim pilgrims home from Jidda to Sokoto, Nigeria.

The pilot was attempting to return to King Abdulaziz International Airport after reporting “technical trouble” when the plane exploded, airport sources said. Other aviation sources said the pilot reported fire in the plane’s landing gear. They said he was advised to dump his fuel and return, but the plane exploded before he could.

One witness said wreckage was “scattered over 600 square yards in the southern desert expanses of the airport.”

“The bodies were mingled with personal items. Nothing was intact,” said Khaled Nazer, an editor of the English-language Jidda daily, Arab News. “It was awful.”

Nazer said that copies of the Koran, the Islam holy book, were scattered among the corpses.

Holdtrade was set up by Ibrahim Dasuki, the son of Nigeria’s supreme Muslim leader, the Sultan of Sokoto, to charter aircraft to carry pilgrims.

Thousands of relatives of the victims massed at the Lagos airport and in Sokoto offices of Nigeria Airlines and the charter company awaiting definitive word on the crash. Sokoto is in the heartland of Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria.

The Saudi and Nigerian governments said in separate announcements that 261 people, including a 14-member crew, were on board. Nigeria said the crew included Americans and Canadians, but it could not be verified that Americans were on board.