KANO, May 5: Rescuers dragged the remains of at least 148 people from the smouldering wreckage of an airliner which slammed into a crowded city in northern Nigeria, the local Red Cross said on Sunday.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo declared two days of national mourning on Sunday after the BAC 1-11-500 ploughed through a poor suburb of the northern city of Kano shortly after takeoff on Saturday.

“As of this afternoon 104 bodies were evacuated to the Murtala Muhammed Hospital, 42 to the Kano State Specialist Hospital, and two to the army specialist hospital,” Red Cross spokesman Patrick Bawa told Reuters in Lagos.

Red Cross vehicles were ferrying the dead to mortuaries as rescuers continued to dig through the rubble at the crash site.

Officials said the dead included all 76 people on board the domestic airliner and scores of residents who died when the plane crashed, setting homes, a mosque and a school ablaze.

“Men formed a line, passing the bodies from rubble to waiting buses,” said a witness in the densely populated Gwammaja district.

“I saw the bodies of many children wrapped in straw mats. I counted more than 10 in a short time,” he said. “The place was filled with smoke and men were yelling orders.”

OBASANJO CALLS FOR PROBE: Obasanjo cut short an official tour of southern Africa to fly home as poorly equipped hospitals struggled to cope with the flood of dead and injured.