Ethiopian Airliner With 90 on Board Crashes into Mediterranean Sea

Beirut, LEBANONAn Ethiopian Airlines commercial jetliner with 90 people on board went down a few minutes after takeoff last night and crashed into the sea off the Lebanese coast, according to news reports. As of 7am EST (mid-day in Lebanon) CNN was reporting that searchers had found 23 bodies floating in the water.

While authorities do not know the cause of the crash, eyewitnesses reported seeing flames coming from the plane before it dropped from radar and crashed about two miles west of the town of Na'ameh, nine miles south of Beirut.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman ruled out terrorism as a cause for the crash. "As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely," he said at a press conference with Defense Minister Elias Murr in the city of Yarze, in east-central Lebanon.

The weather at the time of take-off was reported as "stormy." The plane lifted off 25 minutes after its scheduled departure time, although there was no reason given for the delay.

The state-run Lebanese National News Agency reported midday Monday that there had been no survivors found thus far. A photograph from the Associated Press published this morning in the New York Times shows various bits of debris washed up on the shore—seat cushions, fire extinguishers, and other objects that suggest a hard impact with the water.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 left Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut about 2:30 a.m. Beirut time and was headed to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. However, the plane disappeared from radar a few minutes after takeoff, said Ghazi El Aridi, Lebanon's minister of public works and transportation.

The Boeing 737-800 eight crew members and 82 passengers—51 Lebanese nationals, 23 Ethiopians, two Britons and citizens from Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Canada, Russia and France, the airline said.

Anne Charlotte, a spokesperson for the French embassy in Lebanon, said that Marla Sanchez Pietton, the wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon, Denis Pietton, was on the plane.

Ethiopian Airlines is government-owned and is one of the largest airlines in Africa. It also has a commendable safety record, although there have been two fatal crashes since 1980. In September 1988 a flight ran into a flock of birds during takeoff and the plane had to attempt an emergency landing. A total of 31 people out of the 105 on board died.

In 1996 a highjacked flight appeared doomed when the plane ran out of fuel. The pilot attempted an emergency landing near the Comoros Islands off Africa, only to crash the plane in the endeavor. Of the 172 people on board, 130 died.