Even though there were nine nationalities aboard the Boeing 737 jet which burst into flames and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off in a violent thunderstorm on Monday morning, the Lebanese, naturally enough, only concerned themselves with one.
54 Lebanese, almost all from the country’s predominately Shiite southern region, are probably dead and the nation’s outpouring of grief has been intense.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri declared Monday to be a national day of mourning for the victims; the education minister closed institutions for two days as a mark of respect.
The funeral of a southern businessman, who worked for a food import country in Angola, attracted international media attention, with veiled women throwing themselves on the coffin.
Distraught friends and relatives are still thronging a hospital in southern Beirut, waiting to identify mangled bodies being dragged from the eastern Mediterranean.
The search for the plane’s black box is continuing, with families of victims waiting anxiously for clues on what befell flight ET409 in the seconds before disappearing off radar screens for good.
As with any air disaster in a post 9/11 world, terrorism has been raised as a possible cause, with several Lebanese dailies carrying uncorroborated allegations that the crash was the result of a “deliberate attack.”
Whatever the cause of the disaster, it has exposed the uncomfortable and often unuttered truth that many Lebanese are still virulently racist.
23 migrant domestic workers from Ethiopia were onboard the ill-fated flight, along with at least seven airline crew members. The pilot was also Ethiopian.
In the absence of concrete facts, Lebanon’s transport minister suggested that pilot error may have downed the plane, with the jet having undertaking “a very strange and fast turn” seconds before crashing.
This was all the information many media outlets needed. Naharnet, an English-language news site to be read with a shovelful of salt, carried the offensive headline: “Ethiopian pilot flew wrong way!”
The complete lack of evidence aside, it is certain that no such exclamatory tone would have been used if the pilot were Lebanese.
The inference here is simple: an Ethiopian pilot – silly him – ignored the learned Lebanese air traffic controllers (who have an exemplary record for departure punctuality) and his mad error killed 90 people.
Such scandalous journalese, however, pales in comparison to the appalling treatment of friends and relatives of Ethiopian passengers.
At Rafik Hariri International Airport, while wailing Lebanese family members were consoled by round after round of politicians, offered food and drink and drip fed information on victims as and when it was received, Ethiopian concerned were sidelined totally.
Desperate women, dressed in the scrubs which often adorn domestic workers, pleaded with authorities for information only to be shepherded into a separate room from Lebanese mourners.
DNA databases that will be used to identify mangled corpses are only being compiled from Lebanese blood samples. No Ethiopian has been asked to participate, even if relatives were on board.
A normally well-respected broadcaster conducted a live piece to camera outside a hospital with their Beirut correspondent on Monday night.
An Ethiopian, wracked with grief, unwittingly wondered into shot only to be literally hauled out of view by the Lebanese crew. Had she been Lebanese, it is unthinkable she would have been treated like this.
Much has been written on the plight of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. The relatives of one Ethiopian victim said that their daughter was on the way home to Addis Ababa for good after years of being beaten by employers.
To witness the neglect of friends and relatives left behind in Lebanon will offer Ethiopian families no comfort.
The BBC even commissioned a special report on the Lebanese diasporas in Western Africa. No such article was mooted for the reverse demographic.
It is entirely understandable for news agencies and civilians to take interest in their own nationals during times like this.
But to systematically sideline, even vilify Ethiopian victims, many of whom would have led a pitiful existence in Lebanon in domestic servitude, exudes exactly the opposite of the mercy relatives of Lebanese victims are pleading for.
In times of disaster, people let down their guard. The disaster of flight ET409 showed large parts of Lebanese society for what it is.
(Follow Patrick Galey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/patrickgaley)
(AccuWeather) — Frequent lightning was in the area of Monday morning’s Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crash into the Mediterranean Sea, according to data compiled by AccuWeather.com.
“A significant bolt was detected at 2:37 a.m., local time, 10 miles South of the Beirut Airport and 2.5 miles west of the coastal town of Na’ameh,” said AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity.
There were rain showers accompanied by a considerable amount of thunder and wind in the vicinity of Beirut at the time of the crash. Such weather is very conducive to lightning strikes.
“Turbulent weather, such as the thunderstorms that were in the area during the time of the crash, allows the separation of charges, which causes lightning to occur,” said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Mike Pigott.
The strike was in line with the runway, and occurred shortly after the plane left Beirut at 2:30 a.m.
It appears that this bolt was directly in the flight path of the plane, which was headed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Boeing 737-800 had approximately 90 people aboard. Several bodies have been recovered, and no survivors have been reported.
Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi told the Associated Press that the pilot made “a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar.” It is unclear as to why that happened, but officials have ruled out terrorism.
According to the World Wide Lightning Location Network out of the University of Washington, data showed severe lightning in the Lebanon area hours within the time of the crash.
“Eight WWLLN sensors detected this particular stroke, which indicates the stroke was stronger than average,” said Professor Robert Holzworth, Director of the World Wide Lightning Location Network.
A relative of one of the passengers commented that the plane should have been delayed at take off due to bad weather.
“They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts and we hear that lightning strikes planes especially during take offs.”
Commercial jets are equipped with special lightning protection, including aircraft skins made of electricity-conducive aluminum, Fuel tanks and any piping carrying fuel are also protected by a skin that is thick enough to withstand sparking.
According to the Scientific American, it is estimated that each airplane in the U.S. commercial fleet is stuck by lightning more than once each year.
(Story by AccuWeather.com’s Carly Porter and Gina Cherundolo, with content contributed by Professor Robert Holzworth, Director of the World Wide Lightning Location Network. wwlln.net.)
The identity of the alleged Saudi Princess given secret asylum in the United Kingdom early last year has now been revealed. The young woman, who is in her late 20s is reported to be Sarah Mohammed Al-Amoudi, originally from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and now living in London. Sarah Al-Amoudi told British authorities that she is the daughter of Ethiopian billionaire businessman Mohammed Al-Amoudi who married her off to an elderly and disabled senior member of the Saudi royal family, a “prince,” when she was only 13 years old.
Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, one of the world’s richest men, was born in Ethiopia to a Yemeni father and Ethiopian mother and received Saudi citizenship in the mid 1960s.
Al-Amoudi has been linked (in the press) to the financing of organizations with associations to terrorist groups. The alleged princess, herself, has stated this to numerous individuals. For more on Mr. Al-Amoudi, please copy and paste the links below.
Sarah Al-Amoudi also told British authorities that her father was looking for her and she feared for her life. In a disparate attempt to flee Saudi Arabia, she acquired a Yemeni passport, based on her grandfather’s place of birth and used it to flee Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed Yahya Al-Mutawakel, a senior Yemeni official and a senior member of one of Yemen’s most powerful families, confirmed Sarah Al-Amoudi acquired a Yemeni passport in early 2000 at the passport office in Aden, Yemen. The Aden passport office had major problems with corruption and the illegal issuance of Yemeni passports between 1999 and 2002.
It is also learned that Sarah Al-Amoudi’s longtime lover was one of the four Blackwater contractors famously killed in Fallujah, Iraq on March 31, 2004. After being shot to death, their bodies were mutilated, set aflame and paraded through the streets, before being hung from a bridge, while the world watched in horror. The murderers were never caught. Officially, it was blamed on Islamic militants, but according to sources close to the princess, she believes that her family in Saudi Arabia was probably responsible for the death of her lover as an act of revenge.
More by Ian Gallagher and Amanda Perthen of UK’s Daily Mail
On the surface, it resembles a fairy tale. A beautiful young princess is forced to marry a wicked old nobleman but falls in love with a handsome boy her own age, secretly bears his child, then goes into hiding – lest she falls into the clutches of her husband, who vows to execute her for adultery.
It sounds improbable, but this, in essence, was the story a Saudi princess told one winter morning last year in the unprepossessing surroundings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal at Hatton Cross, near Heathrow Airport.
The princess, who we cannot name for legal reasons, said she was convinced that she and her daughter, whose father is British and once worked at Harrods, would be flogged or stoned to death if forced to return home to Jeddah.
Dealing on a daily basis with desperate immigrants from all corners of the globe, the tribunal has no doubt heard many a tall tale, and the woman’s testimony was nothing if not melodramatic.
Yet it was a story the judge was prepared to accept.
It is redolent of the 1980 television drama-documentary Death Of A Princess, based on the true story of the public execution of a Saudi princess and her adulterous lover, and it is easy to see how the parallels would play upon the minds of those involved in the tribunal.
The judge’s decision to grant her asylum in Britain – she had previously been turned down – only came to light in July along with some sketchy details and speculation about the implications for Anglo-Saudi relations.
Now, an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has uncovered the full story behind the princess’s extraordinary predicament and her desperate efforts to conceal the birth of her child, including an ill-conceived plot to pass off the baby as the daughter of a friend and spirit her to the United States.
Much of her story is revealed in her compelling witness statement, leaked to this newspaper.
In it, the princess says she fears she is being hunted across London by both her husband and her father, whom she names, and whose honour, she says, her actions have compromised.
She also expresses distrust of the British Government and concern that officials might betray her whereabouts.
‘I feared the Home Office would give my details to my husband and my life would be in immediate danger,’ she says in her account.
The sensitivity of the situation and its potential to cause diplomatic tension cannot be overstated.
It is worth noting that the political fallout from the screening of Death Of A Princess was devastating and resulted in a request that Britain withdraw its ambassador to Jeddah.
As the princess herself says in her statement: ‘I am aware that Saudi Arabia is an important business partner of the UK. I am also aware of the power of my husband’s family and also my father in such business dealings.
‘I was very concerned that my situation could become compromised.’
Born in Jeddah, the princess ‘had an Islamic education’ at first.
Then, in common with the children of many wealthy Saudi families, she was sent to a Western school, but taken out after only two years when it was decided she should marry a senior member of the Saudi royal family.
At the time of the wedding, she was still in her early teens, while her husband had already reached old age.
‘The marriage was arranged by my father, who is a close friend to the royal family, and my marriage was a symbol of their friendship – according to custom, I was a gift,’ she says in the statement.
‘In my previous asylum statement and interview, I declined to mention my husband’s name as I thought I had already brought too much shame to him and his family and did not wish to embarrass him, his family or my family further.
‘Moreover, I have received information from third parties that if his name is revealed in any way relating to this case, I and family members who have helped me in Saudi Arabia would be in serious danger – particularly my mother. All members of my family have been banned from talking to me, contacting me, helping me in any way.’
One of several wives, she says she was ‘used for show’ and that the marriage was ‘designed to ensure unity between my own and my husband’s family’.
She adds: ‘The marriage was never consummated and I remained a virgin. Due to his age, his medical conditions and the wishes of his other wives, my husband rarely slept in the same room as me.’
It must have been a dispiriting existence but one lifted by frequent visits to London, which she regarded as her ‘second home’.
It was on one such trip, while shopping with her maid in Harrods, that she met the man who would father her daughter.
‘He approached me and we chatted for some time before he asked for my phone number,’ she recalls in her statement. ‘He was a good-looking man (I did not hesitate to give him my number). He wished to keep in touch with me.
‘At that time, my bodyguard and
driver were waiting for me outside Harrods. As there are strict restrictions in Muslim and Saudi culture, it was common at that time [and still is] for couples to meet in shopping centres and to exchange numbers in this manner.’
They developed a phone relationship – ‘we would talk as if we had known each other since childhood’ – and managed one more clandestine meeting in Harrods before the princess returned home.
No sooner was she back than she persuaded her husband that she needed to return to London for medical reasons.
He acquiesced, and her relationship with the man, a Harrods employee, then became physical, quickly resulting in her pregnancy. The situation was understandably grave. To add a further complication, as if one were needed, her lover was Jewish.
The princess recalls in her statement that she learned of her pregnancy only when she suffered morning sickness and, at first, confided in only her personal servants.
At a later stage, she confessed to her mother, now her closest ally.
To this day, she continues secretly to fund the princess’s life in London with money sent by Western Union.
‘I wanted to have an abortion so that I could continue to lead a normal life with my family, but this was not possible in Saudi Arabia,’ recalls the princess.
‘However, she was able to hide her pregnancy by wearing a loose-fitting head-to-toe abaya cloak.
‘I also wore the abaya while sleeping at night,’ she says. ‘This is common practice for Saudi women.
‘As my husband and I never slept together, it was easy to hide my growing body from him. In addition, my bump was very small and I didn’t gain much excess weight.’
As the pregnancy neared full-term, the princess convinced her husband once again that she needed to visit Britain for medical reasons.
It was during this stay that she gave birth to her child in a London hospital.
Any elation she experienced at holding her daughter for the first time was quickly overtaken by panic and confusion.
At the time, she felt she had little choice but to give up the baby for adoption. Before anything could be resolved, she had to fly back to Saudi Arabia. She left the baby with a female friend.
‘However, once I returned, I realised that my husband had suspicions about me,’ she says. Fearing for her life, she boarded a plane to London and has never been back
to Jeddah since. She says that ‘my main priority was to find a safe place for my daughter and to ensure that she is not the subject of harm’.
The address the princess supplied to the tribunal is an elegantly appointed basement flat in a mansion block in one of the most fashionable districts of West London. Land Registry records confirm that she bought it.
Fate? A woman is buried up to her neck before being stoned to death
When The Mail on Sunday visited the address, we were told she no longer lived there. For a while, she rented a flat on the first floor of the same block, but she now lives in another part of London.
Last week, a former neighbour, who knows the princess’s whereabouts, recalled how she confided in him, revealing how her distress at the time of the pregnancy was compounded when she was abandoned by her lover.
‘She wanted to marry him but unfortunately he disappeared off the scene,’ says the neighbour. ‘She was left to bring up her daughter on her own.’
The neighbour was left in no doubt that her fears were genuine.
But while the Saudi Embassy in London has declined to comment publicly on the case, diplomatic sources have suggested, enigmatically, that the princess ‘may not be all she seems’.
It must also be said that, initially at least, she was denied asylum after the Home Office uncovered ‘inconsistencies’ in her story.
The Mail on Sunday has discovered that she falsified her daughter’s birth certificate, stating on it that the girl’s father was an American and that the mother was her Yemeni friend.
The address given for the couple is in a square in Bayswater, West London. A woman now living in the block says she could not recall the Yemeni woman or her American partner, but did remember the princess living there with her newborn baby, who is now aged eight.
In her statement, the princess admits she lied on the birth certificate but did so to protect her daughter. ‘In desperation, I asked my friend to take my daughter to the US with her American husband and to treat my daughter as her own,’ she says.
The scheme failed when American authorities discovered from DNA and blood samples that the supposed mother was not related to the child.
Why these samples were requested is not clear. But an immigration source familiar with the case said that at one stage both US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI became involved, and expressed concern about the Yemeni’s story.
US records reveal that her wedding to an American from Cleveland, Ohio, took place at a mosque in Las Vegas – two weeks after the princess’s baby was born.
The man’s family explained that he served in the elite Special Forces, America’s equivalent of the SAS, before becoming a private security consultant in Iraq.
In April 2004, he died at the age of 32 when his convoy was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and set ablaze in a notorious atrocity in which three other Americans were also killed.
A frenzied mob dragged their bodies through the streets of Fallujah and hanged two of them from a bridge.
Curiously, his mother told us she had never heard of the Yemeni woman and was mystified when told of a wedding certificate bearing their names.
‘My son wasn’t married. I would have known if he’d had a wife. I was in touch with him every other day,’ she says.
‘He died a single man and as a man of the Catholic faith. He would never have gotten married in a mosque. Someone must have stolen his identity.’
The Mail on Sunday tried to locate the princess’s Yemeni friend but could find no trace of her in the UK or the US.
Following the wedding, there was just one mention of her in public records, when she listed her address as a rented flat in a building in a rundown area of New York.
The flat is now occupied by an Indian couple who do not speak English. No one else in the building recognised her name last week.
Despite the unresolved questions about her account, however, the princess was granted asylum after she testified that she lied to protect herself and her daughter.
‘This is the main reason why I did not include my name on my daughter’s birth certificate. It would give a clear link to where I am living,’ she says.
‘Since coming to the UK, I have not left the country and have had to persevere with my emotional stresses, most importantly, worrying about what will happen to my daughter and me.’
Echo: A scene from 1980 drama documentary Death of a Princess
And she admits: ‘I had been used to a very high standard of living in which almost every part of my life was managed by others.
‘It was a great shock to adjust to managing my own life and being responsible for my daughter. It has been a very lonely period of readjustment, particularly in the knowledge of the stress I have caused to my family in Saudi Arabia.’
She says she is supported by her mother who is ‘sympathetic to my problem. My father is a very strict man and hence my mother always fears his actions.
‘If I return to Saudi Arabia, my daughter and I will be subject to capital punishment under sharia law.
‘In addition, my husband or my father will definitely make sure that we receive the full sharia law punishment, which will include flogging and stoning to death, execution or some other form of honour killing.
‘This is my greatest worry and the cause of my depression.
‘I realise that I have made a mistake but the punishment is so severe and inevitable that I have had no option but to hide in the UK.’
The crew of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed off Lebanon on Monday apparently flew into violent storms after failing to follow controllers’ instructions to avoid them, it emerged today.
“A traffic control recording shows that the tower told the pilot to turn to avoid the storm, but the plane went in the opposite direction,” Elias Murr, the Lebanese Defence Minister, said. “We do not know what happened or whether it was beyond the pilot’s control.”
All 90 on board the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 died when the aircraft hit the Mediterranean shortly after taking off from Beirut airport at 2am. Initial reports talked of a possible mid-air explosion and a possible engine fire before the aircraft took off, but the nearby thunderstorms were seen as a more likely explanation.
Violent cumulonimbus, or thunder, clouds can lead to the destruction of even the biggest aircraft. Airliners fly around them, guided by their own weather radar and sometimes by ground controllers as well.
When flight ET409 took off, controllers gave it vectors — compass headings — to steer around a line of powerful storms that crossed its path over the Mediterranean. Such instructions from departure control are common in the first minutes of flight when bad weather is near by.
Flight ET409 disappeared from radar after five minutes of flight after apparently flying straight into the line of storms.
Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese Transport Minister, said that the pilot at the controls flew in the opposite direction to that advised by the controllers. They “asked him to correct his path but he did a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar,” he said.
There was no indication over what caused the crew to follow the wrong heading.
Severe weather has been blamed for many airliners disasters, most recently the crash of a Kenyan Airways Boeing 737 in Cameroon in 2007.
A line of violent thunderstorms is also believed to have been a major factor in the crash of Air France flight 447 that came down off Brazil last June 1. The causes have not yet been determined, but the sequence that led to the crash began when the Airbus A330 flew into violent storm cells, then, in heavy turbulence and rain, its speed-reading probes were blocked by water or ice.
The explosive vertical columns of wind in the heart of mature cumulonimbus clouds can quickly send aircraft out of control and even rip off their wings and tails. There is speculation among airline pilots today that the pilots of the Ethiopian Boeing may have lost control in such violent weather.
Without correct recovery by the pilots, this could have led to a stall or spin and a crash, or even a mid-air break-up. The aircraft was only at about 8,000ft altitude as it climbed away from Beirut. This would have given the crew very little time to regain control.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — China’s minister for commerce says trade with Ethiopia will reach $3 billion by 2015
ASK AN Addis Ababa taxi driver to take you to Ethio-China Friendship Road and he might just scratch his head.
The renaming of Wollo Sefer, one of the Ethiopian capital’s main thoroughfares, in tribute to the country’s burgeoning ties with Beijing might be obvious from the new street signs but it has yet to filter down to everyday use.
The road is not the only marker of China’s growing engagement with Ethiopia.
Addis Ababa’s ultramodern airport was built by the Chinese, as was the city’s ring road and flyover.
An extensive renovation of the African Union headquarters in downtown Addis is being financed by the Chinese to the tune of more than $100 million (€71 million).
Across the city, a Chinese government-built school, designed to cater for up to 3,000 students, offers Mandarin classes as part of its curriculum.
Scores of Ethiopians have been given scholarships to study subjects including engineering and architecture in China.
The Chinese restaurants and clinics advertising acupuncture and traditional herbal remedies that have become part of the landscape in almost every African city in recent years are here too. According to local media, some 1,000 Chinese companies operate in Ethiopia.
Besuited Chinese businessmen can be seen discussing deals in Addis hotel lobbies, while engineers and others fresh from working on road and telecommunications projects or building power stations and water supply systems haggle for souvenirs in the city’s sprawling Merkato before flying home to Beijing.
In some Ethiopian towns and villages, it is not uncommon for foreigners to find themselves being greeted by children yelling “China, China”.
Earlier this month Chen Deming, China’s minister for commerce, was in town predicting that trade volume between the two countries will reach $3 billion by 2015. Chinese investment in Ethiopia amounted to just under $1 billion last year, and there is much talk of future investment in agricultural projects.
“China and Ethiopia have been mutually supportive on the political front and closely co-operating on the economic front,” Chen said, going on to use the stock expression Chinese officials trot out when discussing relations with African states: “It is fair to regard the Sino-Ethiopian friendship as an all-weather one.”
China’s new engagement with Africa has played out very differently across the continent, helping revitalise moribund economies in some countries, while breeding resentment elsewhere due to support for unsavoury regimes, poor work practices and threatened local industries.
There have been a few cautionary tales for the Chinese along the way. In 2007, for example, nine Chinese oil workers were killed and seven briefly kidnapped in the restive Ogaden area of eastern Ethiopia.
Ethiopian prime minister genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi says African states must be prudent in setting the parameters of the relationship.
“The Chinese interest in Ethiopia has been nothing short of a godsend,” he tells The Irish Times.
“We have benefited massively from it, but like everything else it is capable of becoming a nightmare . . . It is up to the host countries as to how they use the available resources from the Chinese in the best possible manner. Those who do will benefit, those who don’t may not benefit as perhaps they ought to.”
China’s assistance in building infrastructure and its investment in manufacturing has been invaluable for Ethiopia, Meles says.
“We need investment from any quarter we can get it. The Chinese have been more aggressive in investing in Ethiopia than many others and our hope is that Chinese investment will entice not only additional Chinese investment but also investment from other countries.”
But, as in every African country wooing Beijing, there is debate over who stands to gain. A 2008 study by an economist at Addis Ababa University noted that while Ethiopian consumers will benefit from cheap Chinese imports, small local firms, particularly in the clothing and footwear sectors, will lose out.
Opposition figures, like many of their counterparts elsewhere in Africa, mutter darkly about deals agreed behind closed doors, and speculate on the motives of both the government and Beijing.
One told me he suspects that the Meles regime sees China’s overtures as an opportunity to shore up support where it matters on the world stage.
Whatever way the debate shifts, however, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the Chinese are here to stay.
Stormy weather or sabotage are being cited in the aviation world as possible factors in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 off Beirut.
There is no evidence yet to suggest what caused the modern Boeing 737-800 airliner to hit the Mediterranean minutes after take-off. But attention focused on powerful thunder storms in the area and the possibility that an explosion could have caused the sudden end to the flight.
The crew were talking to the area “departure control” which was handling their flight when their transmissions stopped. This could mean that the aircraft suddenly broke up or that the crew were too busy handling an emergency to transmit a message.
The airport was under heavy rain and a line of thunderstorms were positioned off the coast, along the route of the Boeing as it climbed out of Beirut. The pilots would normally avoid the violent “cells” in the cumulonimbus thunder clouds, but these have brought down airliners in the past.
Most recently, in May 2007, a Kenyan Airways Boeing 737 crashed after a night take off in thunderstorms and heavy rain from Douala, Cameroon, killing all 114 on board. The cause of the crash has still not been determined, but the bad weather is thought by experts to have played a big role.
The explosive turbulence inside a cumulonimbus can upset even the biggest airliners. Such storms were an element in the crash last June 1 of Air France flight 447 off Brazil, according to the preliminary findings.
Lightning strikes are not normally a danger to airliners but dense rain can occasionally cause jet engines to “flame out” and stop. In this case, the crew would normally report their predicament to controllers, telling them that they were gliding and attempting to restart.
It is too early to rule out sabotage, as the Lebanese Government did, unless it holds information that it has not released.
If the pilots did not reported any problem, an explosive or other foul play cannot be excluded, aviation experts said. Speculation over possible sabotage or terrorism is natural, given Beirut’s position in the Middle East and Ethiopia’s support for the government of Somalia in its conflict with Islamist insurgents.
Eye-witness reports of a mid-air explosion should not be taken at face value. Such reports are common whenever a night-time crash is witnessed. The usual reason is the much higher speed of light than sound. The witness sees the fire of a distant crash before the noise, giving the false impression of preceding it.
Simple pilot error has sometimes caused airliners to crash after night take-off.
In January 2004, an Egyptian Boeing 737 hit the Red Sea shortly after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all the 148 aboard, most of them French tourists. It was found that the automatic pilot was not connected and the pilots, flying in pitch dark, let the aircraft fly almost on to its back before they lost control.
Ethiopian Airlines is viewed as one of the best on the African continent and the Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most reliable aircraft. The last fatal incident involving the airline was in November 1996. A hijacked Boeing 767 crashed-landed off the Comoros Islands after running out of fuel. Fifty of the 175 people aboard survived.
The Boeing 737 has been manufactured since 1967 with over 6,000 aircraft delivered. On average there are 1,250 737s airborne at any given time.
Fate? A woman is buried up to her neck before being stoned to death
Echo: A scene from 1980 drama documentary Death of a Princess