Addis Ababa: An Ethiopian Airlines (EA) flight crashed shortly after takeoff from the capital here Sunday morning killing all 157 on board, according to statements from the airline and the state broadcaster. There were four Indians on the ill-fated aircraft.
There were no immediate details on what caused the crash of the Boeing 737-8 MAX plane, which was new and had been delivered to the airline in November.
The airline’s statement said 149 passengers and eight crew members were on the plane which crashed six minutes after departing from here on its way to Kenya’s capital. The crash occurred around Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of this city, at 8.44am.
While the airline said ‘search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties’, a separate statement by the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s office offered its ‘deepest condolences’ to families.
State broadcaster ‘EBC’ reported all passengers were dead and that the passengers included 33 nationalities. An Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said 32 Kenyans and 17 Ethiopians were among the victims. Among the other victims were 18 Canadians, eight each from China, the US and Italy, seven each from France and Britain, six from Egypt, five from the Netherlands and four from Slovakia.
The last deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane was in 2010, when the plane crashed minutes after takeoff from Beirut killing all 90 people on board. A similar aircraft had crashed close to Java, the Indonesian capital in October, killing 189 people.
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