All 117 Dead in Nigeria Crash

All 117 people aboard a Nigerian Boeing 737 died when the airliner crashed and disintegrated shortly after takeoff from Lagos, the government said Sunday.

Body parts, fuselage fragments and engine pieces were strewn over an area the size of a football field near this village, about 20 miles north of Lagos.

“The federal government announces with regret the unfortunate air crash of Bellview Airlines ... which resulted in the loss of life of all passengers and crew on board,” a government statement said.

A senior police official at the scene said: “The aircraft has crashed and it is a total loss. We can’t even see a whole human body.”

Flight 210 left Lagos on Saturday night on a scheduled flight to the capital, Abuja, and lost contact minutes later during a heavy electrical storm.

The pilot made a distress call indicating that the plane had a technical problem, a government source said.

The plane left a smoking, 70-foot-wide crater in the marshy earth, uprooted trees and blew the roofs off nearby houses.

The plane was carrying 111 passengers and six crew members.

A U.S. official confirmed that an American military officer was aboard. Diplomats and airline officials said the plane was also believed to be carrying a top official of the Economic Community of West African States, a Nigerian presidential aide, two Britons and a German.

Relatives wailed and prayed at Lagos airport as an airline official read a list of passengers. State TV said the nation would observe three days of mourning.