Rescue workers digging through rubble after a plane crash in Nigeria that killed the 153 people on board turned their attention on Monday to the ruins of a building where more deaths were feared.

An Indian co-pilot was among the dead and it is believed that over 40 others on the ground were also killed in the mishap.

The force of the impact plowed the plane into a two-story residential building, which had four to five flats per floor.

"For now, nobody can estimate the number of corpses still lying there," Sam Udo Onyemachi of Nigeria's Security and Civil Defence Corps said, standing on the fringes of the crash site.

A mass of rubble made access to the building difficult, but once the debris is cleared, excavation teams will begin combing through what remains of the flats in hopes of discovering how many people died there, officials said.

Rescue workers had recovered at least 137 bodies by Monday evening following Sunday's crash in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, with most of those victims believed to be passengers in the plane.

The corpses from the rubble included a woman clutching a baby. The woman and his baby are suspected to be occupants of the building where the aircraft plunged into.

A resident who escaped unhurt with his family said the plane did not explode immediately. "The aircraft did not go up in flames immediately it plunged into the building and it took up to 10 minutes before it exploded," he said.

Officials said more bodies will likely be found inside the residential building.

"There are a lot of bodies hanging on the wall," Clem Onyeyiri of Nigeria's Accident Investigations Bureau told reporters. People "were burned into the building. They were burned with the fuselage and everything," he added.

The building's largely ruined outer wall was still partly standing, as its inner structures and material spilled below.

Engines failed before crash

The pilot of the flight reported to the control tower that both of its engines had failed before it went down, the civil aviation chief said.

Director of Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority Harold Demureen said that there was confusion at the airport before it was learnt that the aircraft has crashed. But Dana Airline, the owners of the aircraft with registration number 5N-RAM, said despite being 22-years-old the plane was still serviceable and operational.

The companies Director of Flight Operations, Captain Oscar Wilson, said that the aircraft was in good condition.

Buildings destroyed completely

Residents and rescue workers said that the Dana Air MD83 first plowed into a warehouse used to store textbooks, an adjacent duplex house and a church, but those buildings are gone.

Mounds of rubble spewing white dust were all that remained of them in the crowded and poor neighbourhood near the airport on the northern outskirts of the city.

On Monday morning, a crane precariously hoisted the passenger jet's tail and moved it to the side of the crash site so that the digging at the epicentre could continue.

"The whole place is just messed up," said Onyeyiri, whose agency was investigating the crash in one of the world's largest cities, home to an estimated 15 million people.

Relatives of those presumed dead went to the morgue at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, where an attendant said in the afternoon that more than 100 bodies had been delivered since late Sunday.

An ambulance carrying 13 corpses had divided the bodies into two categories: the four held in blue bags were those that could still be identified, while the identities of the nine in black bags were considered more difficult to establish.

"I have been looking without success for my darling wife," said one man, who declined to be identified, but was showing others pictures of her while asking for help.

He was expecting her home on Sunday, he explained, before he learned about the crash.

The site had transformed since late Sunday when the thousands of people crushed against each other in the area to gape at the destruction led to chaotic and at times violent incidents.

An afternoon visit by Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan compelled the security services to mostly evacuate the street, and long after Jonathan had left, a road remained clear for the large trucks hauling away the rubble.

Searches were called off as night fell on Monday evening, but rescuers said they would return early the next day.