A Nigerian airliner with 104 people on board crashed on Sunday near the airport in the capital Abuja, Nigerian media reported.

Debris from the crash was strewn over an area the size of a football field where the plane went down in a wooded area, a witness said. The crash site was about three kilometers from the end of the runway at the airport in Abuja.

Smoke rose from the plane's mangled and smoldering fuselage as rescue workers pulled out corpses. Approximately 50 bodies were placed in a corner of the site. The tail of the plane was hanging from a tree.

State radio said the Boeing 727 crashed shortly after taking off from the airport in Abuja during a storm. Witnesses said there was a rainstorm at around the time the aircraft took off.

The aircraft was flying to the northwest city of Sokoto, the private Channels Television and state radio said. Channels had earlier reported the plane was going to Lagos.

Among those aboard was the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, according to Mustapha Shehu, spokesman for the Sokoto state government. Maccido is the head of the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria. The organization announces when Muslim fasts should begin and end and decides policy issues on behalf of Nigeria's predominant Sunni Muslim population.

Shehu said the sultan's son, Muhammed Maccido, a senator, was also aboard along with Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former Nigerian President Shehu Shagari, who was in office between 1979 and 1983. The fates of these people were not immediately clear.

About half of Nigeria's 130 million people are Muslims. The country is the most populous in Africa and the continent's leading oil exporter.

At the airport in Abuja security officials kept away a crush of people seeking information about friends or family aboard the plane.

President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation into the cause, his spokeswoman Remi Oyo said in a statement.

Oyo said Obasanjo was "deeply and profoundly shocked and saddened ... he consoles all Nigerians, especially family, friends and associates of those who may have been on board."

A local radio station, Ray Power FM, reported the plane was owned by Aviation Development Co, a private Nigerian airline.

The company last suffered a crash in November 1996 when one of its jets plunged into a lagoon outside Nigeria's main city, Lagos, killing all 143 aboard.

Last year two Nigerian planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other killing 224 people.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2006)