| Situation Update No. 4 Ref.no.: VI-20100125-24688-LBN
Situation Update No. 4
On 2010-01-25 at 14:05:58 [UTC]
Event: Vehicle Accident
Location: Lebanon Capital City Mediterranean Sea Beirut
Number of Deads: 14 person(s)
Number of Missing: 92 person(s)
Situation: The ninety passengers and crew members who were on board the Ethiopian Airlines airplane that crashed into the sea off the coast of Lebanon immediately after taking off from the airport in Beirut are all dead. According to Ethiopian Airlines, no one on the Boeing 737-800 survived. There were no Italians on the list of 83 passengers, while there were 58 Lebanese citizens (four of which had British, Russian and Canadian passports), 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi citizen, one Syrian, and one French citizen, Maria Sanchez Pietton, the wife of the French Ambassador in Lebanon, Denis Pietton. Until now about 10 bodies have been recovered at sea, while intense rescue missions carried out by helicopters and civilian and military Lebanese ships continue, aided by UNIFIL ships, the UN force deployed in Southern Lebanon, which includes about 2,000 Italian troops. Cyprus is also providing aid in the rescue mission, with several naval helicopters. The causes of the disaster are still uncertain, but may be due to strong storms, which have been hitting the coast of Lebanon for days. President Michel Suleiman publically ruled out any ''act of sabotage'', while Premier Saad Hariri announced a period of national mourning. According to reports from Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi, the Boeing 737-800 headed to Addis Ababa crashed 3.5km off the coast of Lebanon, near the town of Naame, about 10km south of Beirut, but the search radius is including up to 12km off the coast. The incident occurred at about 2:30AM local time (1:30AM in Italy); ''The control tower in Beirut told us that they lost contact with the pilots immediately after takeoff suddenly and without knowing why,'' said Minister Aridi. Eyewitnesses cited by the local media said that they saw ''a ball of fire'' fall into the sea. This airline disaster come about a month after the death of about 60 people, mostly sailors, when a Panamanian ship sunk off the coast of Lebanon near the northern port of Tripoli. The incident was caused by bad weather. |
