A Nigerian aircraft with eight people on board has crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, the country's federal ministry of aviation said on Thursday, revealing that bodies of three victims have already been retrieved.
The incident happened at 11:22am local time (1022GMT) near Bonny Finima in Nigeria's southern state of Rivers.
The crash involved a helicopter, Sikorsky 5K76 of registration 5NBQG, which was en route to an oil drilling site in southern Nigeria from the Part Harcourt Military Base.
The ill-fated aircraft was being operated by East Wind Aviation.
Concerted effort
"The Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau has been notified (about the accident), and emergency response teams were immediately activated, and search and rescue operations are ongoing with the support of the Nigerian Search and Rescue Unit, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the National Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), and other relevant agencies," aviation ministry's head of press and public relations, Odutayo Oluseyi, said in a statement on Thursday.
"While no Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) signal was received, manual efforts to plot the location of the accident are underway, and all available resources, including the military and low-flying aircraft, have been deployed to assist in locating and rescuing any survivor(s)."
The aviation ministry said that at least three bodies had been recovered as of Thursday evening.
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