Nigerian among passengers of crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight

The Ethiopian Airlines on Sunday announced a Nigerian was in its flight that crashed and killed all those on board Sunday morning.

Flight ET-302 went down near Bishoftu, a community roughly 60 kilometres southeast of capital Addis Ababa, the airline said. The airline confirmed the plane was a Boeing 737 MAX 8, registration number ET-AVJ.

It left Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. local time for Nairobi, Kenya, and crashed at 8:44 a.m. local time after losing contact with the control tower. All the 149 passengers and eight crew were killed.

The airline released a list on Twitter of the nationalities of the passengers who were on board, and said investigations had commenced.

The airline issued a manifest of citizens from several countries who were aboard the ill-fated crash, which showed that Kenyans were the highest at 32.

Canada suffered the second highest casualties after Kenya at 18. Others included: Kenya, 32; Canada, 18; India, four; Germany, five; Egypt, six; United Kingdom, seven; France, seven; United States, eight; Italian, eight; China, eight; Ethiopia, nine; United Nations passport, one; Sudan, one; Serbia, one; Nepal, one; Yemen, one; Uganda, one, Somalia, one; Saudi Arabia, one; Rwanda, one; Nigeria, one; Norway, one; Mozambique, one; Ireland, one; Indonesian, one; Djibouti, one; Belgium, one; Poland, two; Morocco, two; Israel, two; Spain, two; Sweden, three; Russia, three; Austrian, three; Slovakia, four.

The airline said it has contacted all countries involved with details of their respective citizens.

The Kenyan media published names of that country’s 32 citizens involved in the crash Sunday evening.

A Nigerian foreign ministry spokesperson, Tope Elias-Fatile, did not return PREMIUM TIMES requests for comments on the lone Nigerian Sunday evening.