Nigeria 'set to cancel China friendly'

Mosques and houses were flattened by the plane

BEIJING, China -- Nigeria could cancel a World Cup warm-up match away to China next Saturday out of respect to the African nation's sports minister who was killed in Saturday's plane crash.

A senior Nigerian Football Association official told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper on Monday they had decided to cancel the friendly after an airliner slammed into the Nigerian city of Kano, killing at least 148 people, including Ishaya Mark Aku.

Most of the dead were children at an Islamic school the plane slammed into, creating a giant fireball. An additional 49 people on the ground were injured by the crash, the International Red Cross said.

"The decision was made in memory of the death of Nigeria's sports minister killed in an air crash," Reuters reported the paper as saying.

But the Chinese Football Association (CFA) said Nigeria had made no formal request to cancel the match, which is scheduled to take place in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, the paper added.

China arranged the friendly with Nigeria after Ecuador pulled out of a warm-up scheduled for May 22 and the national team now has only three warm-up matches before the World Cup finals start.

The Chinese are gearing up for their first appearance in the World Cup finals in the May 31-June 30 tournament co-hosted by

South Korea and Japan. They meet Brazil, Turkey and Costa Rica in group C.