107 Perish in Nigerian Plane Crash

Nigerian accident investigators have found the "black box" flight data recorders of a commercial airliner which crashed killing 107 people on board, a spokesperson for the country's Civil Aviation Authority said Sunday.About 71 of those who died were schoolchildren from the Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja who were returning home for their Christmas holidays."We have retrieved the black boxes and brought them to Lagos en route for abroad for proper analysis," Sam Aduroboye told AFP by telephone.

On Saturday the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operated by the private Nigerian airline Sosoliso crashed as it arrived in the southern city of Port Harcourt from Abuja and attempted to land during an electrical storm.

Officials at the scene of the accident told AFP on Sunday that the jet appeared to have touched down on the runway then veered off to starboard and hit a drainage culvert. The plane was ripped apart and burst into flames, killing all but seven people on board.

Four of the survivors have since died of their injuries.President Olusegun Obasanjo has demanded that representatives of the airline industry and aviation safety agencies join him on Tuesday for an emergency meeting after the crash, which came just seven weeks after a similar air disaster claimed 117 lives, reports AFP. I.L.