A British woman is feared to be among the victims of a plane crash in Nigeria that killed everyone on board.
Jill Chime, from Liverpool, told Radio 5 Live’s Up All Night programme that her family had seen a passenger list which included the name of her sister, Antonia Attuh.
Ms Chime said another sister had now flown to Nigeria to help other family members find Ms Attuh’s body, which they believe is in a hospital mortuary.
Ms Chime said her sister had travelled to Nigeria frequently in recent years and was going to Lagos to attend a course.
She said: “My sister was a wonderful person, quite an exceptional person. She was a statistician - maths was the thing she loved doing and loved most.”
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Ms Chime said she was at her parents’ house on Sunday when they first heard about the crash.
She said: “My sister was travelling to Lagos and that was as far as I knew. I wasn’t certain of what airline she had gone on.
“We were immediately concerned because we had spoken to my sister in the morning and she was telling us she was going to Lagos that afternoon.
“When I heard about the crash I had to try and find out what airline she had taken.”
All 153 passengers on board the Dana Air flight, a Nigerian domestic carrier, died when it crashed into a block of flats in a densely populated area of Lagos, the country’s economic capital, on Sunday.
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More people were believed to have been killed on the ground after the aircraft hit the three-storey building and a furniture shop in an impoverished neighbourhood about five miles north of the Murtala Muhammed International airport.
A relation who was due to collect Ms Attuh from the airport told Ms Chime her sister was aboard the doomed Dana Air flight. The woman’s husband confirmed that he had seen her off at the airport.
Ms Chime also said the airline also told her that her sister’s name was on the final passenger list.
“It is very difficult and distressing,” she said.
The plane was arriving from the capital, Abuja, when it crashed into a printing works and residential buildings in the busy Iju-Ishaga suburb.
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An unknown number of people on the ground were also killed.
The Nigerian Government suspended the licence of Dana Air yesterday and grounded all its flights while it investigates the accident.
The airline said the air crew radioed the tower at the airport in Lagos shortly before the crash to say they had engine trouble, but the exact cause of the crash remains unclear.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was unable to confirm whether Ms Attuh had been on board but a spokeswoman said: “It is believed that there was a dual British-Nigerian national on board the flight.
“The Foreign Office has been in contact with a member of her family and offered consular assistance.”