A PLANE crashed into a densely populated residential area in Lagos on the afternoon of Sunday June 3rd, killing all 153 passengers and scores more on the ground. As the rescuers struggled to contain the blaze, hundreds of locals looked on with shock and disbelief. The fire service, ill-equipped to deal with such disasters, could not find enough water in the shanty district to put out the flames and smoke was still rising from the ashes the next morning.

The plane was coming into land in Lagos's busy Murtala Muhammed Airport from the capital, Abuja, when it plunged into buildings in Agege, one of the city's  suburbs. Lagos has a population of around 15m and is believed to be the largest city in Africa. Many of its residents live in dilapidated buildings with tin roofs and wooden walls. Shacks and tenuous structures wind around miles of narrow dirt tracks.

Officials at the scene said some residents had been trapped in their homes, their chances of survival slim. As pictures and videos of the crash were released, relatives unable to reach their family members rushed to the site, their hopes quickly quashed by early predictions from the Nigerian Civil Aviation authority that there would be no survivors.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared three days of national mourning and ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, trying to reassure travellers about Nigerian air safety. The country 's record for airline safety is spotty. In 2006, 96 people died when another Nigerian airliner with 114 passengers on board crashed during take-off from Abuja. Sunday's disaster was Africa's second in 24 hours after a Boeing 727 cargo plane from a Nigerian-registered airline travelling from Lagos crashed into Ghana's international airport, killing at least 10 people.

It was a bloody Sunday for Nigeria. A suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a church in northern Nigeria, killing 12 people, in the latest deadly attack on Christian worshippers. Although it is not clear who was responsible for the attack, it bears all the hallmarks of Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group which has been attacking churches and increasingly using suicide bombers in the last year.