Black boxes recovered

"The boxes were found this morning and handed over to the appropriate authorities," said Police Commissioner Tunji Alapini, whose men were the first to arrive after the plane disintegrated as it fell from the sky during a thunderstorm.

"There is nothing more to rescue. The destruction is total," he said late on Sunday as he left the crash site at Lissa village near Otta in a cocoa farming area north of Nigeria's commercial capital.

Already as night fell Sunday, 24 hours after the mystery disaster, the huge hole gouged out by the falling plane was enveloped in the foul stench of dozens of dismembered and rotting corpses.

Local villagers said that the Boeing 737 jet appeared to have exploded in mid-air as it fought its way northwards through a thunderstorm shortly after nightfall on Saturday.