Rescuers and fi refi ghters work at the scene of the Dana Airline plane crash in the densely populated Toyin Area of Iju Ishaga in Lagos on Monday.  [Photo by Emmanuel Arewa / AFP]

Nigerian rescuers have confirmed the first deaths on the ground caused by a devastating plane crash in the country's largest city, raising the toll to 157, an official said on Tuesday.

The death toll rose after rescuers confirmed the deaths of at least four people from a residential building in the Lagos neighborhood where the Dan Air MD83 crashed on Sunday afternoon, in addition to the 153 crew and passengers, the official said.

"A couple died while their children survived, then a woman and her daughter," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide figures.

The number of deaths could rise further as searches continue at the site near the airport, particularly amid the ruins of the two-story residential building.

Chinese victims

The victims include a number of foreigners, including six Chinese, an Indian and an unknown number of Americans. The pilot was an American and the co-pilot was Indian, the country's civil aviation chief has said.

Relatives of the six Chinese victims are waiting for DNA tests as the bodies have not been found.

Qiu Jian, acting consul-general of Chinese Consulate in Abuja, told reporters that the scene of the accident is very hectic. "It is very hard to move around because of the huge crowd. It will take some time to identify the bodies," Qiu said.

Having completed an initial examination of corpses in the nearby hospitals, consulate officials found that most of the bodies were difficult to identify, and none showed obvious features of Chinese citizens, Qiu said. The consulate is currently negotiating for DNA tests on the bodies, Qiu added.

The four victims, Zhai Shutao, Kang Yi, Wang Yu and Li Huizhu, are two couples from China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, an infrastructure construction company. Both couples were near retirement and on their way back to China.

Sources close to the victims said Zhai, a senior official of CCECC's local branch, has a 28-year-old child in China. He said the two couples originally planned to travel to some east African countries before flying back to China.

The other two victims were from Changlin Company Ltd, which specializes in construction machinery. An employee of the company in East China's Jiangsu province who declined to be named said that the company has confirmed the identities of the two victims: Li Rui and Xie Zhenfeng. Li, 26, from Central China's Hubei province, had just married. Xie, a father of a 6-year-old girl, was from Jiangsu province. Chinese in Nigeria often choose to take the flight between Abuja and Lagos since many Chinese companies have construction sites in both cities and land transportation is inconvenient.

Heavy downpour

A torrential downpour and strong winds prevented emergency crews from returning on Tuesday morning to conduct rescue work.

The storm began on Tuesday morning before dawn, flooding roads and bringing down power lines and trees in Lagos. Traffic crawled through the area, stopping searchers from returning to the site, said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

Charred metal from the plane, rubble from destroyed buildings, thick mud and standing water await the emergency workers. The apartment building struck by the nose of the aircraft began shaking on Monday as rescuers dug through debris.

"It's going to be messy," Shuaib said.

The crash occurred on Sunday afternoon in Lagos' Iju-Ishaga neighborhood, about 9 kilometers from Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport.

Pilots on the flight from Nigeria's capital Abuja to its largest city of Lagos radioed the tower that they had engine trouble shortly before the crash, but the exact cause remained unclear. The weather was clear at the time.

Late on Monday, emergency workers recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, said Tunji Oketunbi, a spokesman for the Accident Investigation Bureau, which probes airplane crashes in Nigeria.

China Daily—AP—AFP