90 maybe dead in Ethiopian aircraft crash

It is thought that ninety people are dead in an Ethiopian airliner crashed in stormy weather on early Monday. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashed about five minutes after takeoff from Beirut in a thunderstorm at 2:30 am (1230 GMT) with 83 passengers and nine crew members.

Many witnesses saw a ball of fire as the Boeing 737-800 plunged into the sea about seven miles (12km) south of the airport and three miles off the coast.
According to Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese Minister of Transport, the control tower had tried to help the pilot but lost the contact with them without reason.

The Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman said that he did not think this accident as sabotage.

The rescuers had tried to reach the plane to determine whether there were any survivors. At the sunset in the same day, about 30 bodies from Flight 409 had been found. It is hard to expect that the rest will be alive. The passengers included 54 Lebanese, 23 Ethiopians, one French woman, one Briton, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Turk and another of as yet undetermined nationality.

With the support from United Nations and US Navy's Sixth Fleet, the Lebanese Navy is patrolling the Lebanese coastline. Beside that, a helicopter and an aircraft were sent by the Royal Air Force and France to assist for finding survivors. Moreover, the crash had capture hundreds of people to be present on the seashore.

Returning to Beirut from Saudi Arabia, Saad Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister, met relatives of the passengers at the airport and expressed that government as well as related agencies will try their best to find survivors. Also he highlighted that divers would search for the plane's black box to make clear reason for the crash.

The Boeing 737-800 entered commercial service in 1998 and is one of the latest versions of the world's most widely used short- to medium-haul airliner, capable of carrying 189 passengers.

Ethiopian Airlines was established in 1946 and operating an all-Boeing fleet. With about 550 flights around the world each week, Ethiopian Airlines is considered one of Africa's best carriers, but has had two major crashes since 1980.

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