Most Popular Content - www.foxnews.com: Passenger plane carrying 153 crashes in Nigeria's largest city

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Passenger plane carrying 153 crashes in Nigeria's largest city Jun 3rd 2012, 15:33 LAGOS, Nigeria –  A plane struck a two-story building in Nigeria's largest city of Lagos on Sunday, resulting in an unknown number of casualties, officials said.  The head of the Civil Aviation Authority told AFP that the plane was carrying 153 passengers. "I don't believe there are any survivors,"  Harold Demuren said. Firefighters pulled at least one body from the heavily damaged building and searched for survivors. The Dana Air flight was taking passengers from Lagos to Abuja, said Harold Denuren, head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. The plane went down in clear and sunny weather. At the crash site, an Associated Press reporter saw parts of the plane's seat signs scattered around. The rest of the plane was cratered into the apartment building. Firefighters tried to put out the smoldering flames of a jet engine and carried at least one corpse from the building that continued to crumble. Thousands of people looked on. Two firetrucks and about 50 rescue personnel were at the site about an hour after the plane went down. A military helicopter flew overhead. Lagos' international airport is a major hub for West Africa and saw 2.3 million passengers pass through it in 2009, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria. In August 2010, the U.S. announced it had given Nigeria the FAA's Category 1 status, its top safety rating that allows the nation's domestic carriers to fly directly to the U.S. The Nigerian government said it also now has full radar coverage of the entire nation. However, in a nation where the state-run electricity company is in tatters, state power and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank. On Saturday, a  Boeing 727 cargo plane coming from Lagos crashed at Ghana's international airport, killing at least 10 people after it slammed through a fence and onto a nearby street, the country's transit company said Sunday. The crash occurred in Accra near Kotoka International Airport, which sits near newly built high-rise buildings and hotels. Witnesses said the plane first smashed through the fence that runs around the airport before hitting a bus. Randy Banahene, a taxi driver who saw the crash, said an explosion sound was heard when the plane hit a wall. He said the plane landed on its belly across a road, its nose nicked and tail bent with punctures on its side, just yards from a residential neighborhood. Officials opened an investigation into the crash Sunday. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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