A Nigerian airliner with 104 people on board slammed into the ground moments after takeoff Sunday and aviation authorities said six people survived with the rest feared dead. It was the third deadly crash of a passenger plane in less than a year in this West African nation. Among those killed was the man regarded as the spiritual leader of Nigeria's Muslims, and thousands of people gathered at a regional airport to receive his body. The Boeing 737 crashed one minute after taking off from Abuja airport, said Sam Adurogboye, an Aviation Ministry spokesman. President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, his spokeswoman Remi Oyo said. Rescue workers found debris from the smashed plane, body parts and luggage strewn over an area the size of a football field. The plane went down inside the sprawling airport compound about two miles from the runway. Smoke rose from the aircraft's mangled and smoldering fuselage. Its tail hung from a tree. Emergency workers pulled blackened corpses from the wreckage, then covered the bodies with white sheets and hauled them away in stretchers. An Associated Press reporter counted at least 50 cadavers, though other bodies had been transported earlier to local morgues. Through the day, airport security officials kept back anxious people seeking information about friends or loved ones. Adurogboye said 104 passengers and crew had been aboard the doomed flight, and he knew of six survivors who had been taken to a hospital. "Obviously the rest are feared dead," he said. The plane was bound for the northwest city of Sokoto, about 500 miles northwest of Abuja, state radio said, adding that it had gone down during a storm. Witnesses said there was a rainstorm around the time the aircraft took off, but rains later subsided, giving way to overcast skies. In an announcement broadcast on state radio, the Sokoto state government announced the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, died in the crash. Maccido headed the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria.
