No survivors among 157 passengers and crew on crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight

An Ethiopian Airlines plane.
(Image credit: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

An Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members crashed shortly after takeoff from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on Sunday.

Despite search and rescue efforts, Ethiopia's state broadcaster announced that there were no survivors. The plane, a new Boeing 737 that was delivered to Ethiopian airlines in November 2018, was on a regularly scheduled flight en route to Nairobi and lost contact with ground control about six minutes after takeoff. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Passengers on board hailed from 33 different countries. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta both offered their condolences.

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Al Jazeera reported that the crash was the first major accident involving Ethiopian airlines since 2010, when a passenger plane exploded after taking off from Lebanon, killing 83 passengers and seven crew members.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.