Passengers’ Families Wait…For Any News

Local Editor, 25-1-2010

Eager families of the passengers aboard doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 crowded into the Beirut International Airport on Monday morning and later poured into the different hospitals have started to receive the corpses of the crash victims.

Relatives of the passengers, dozens of men, women and children sat in front of a television in the main room of the airport Salon -which is usually reserved as a greeting area for arriving diplomats.

Psychiatrists and public health experts from the Ministry of Health were dispatched to help calm the panicked family members.

Joseph Imad, 35, whose Ethiopian sister-in-law was on the plane, paced back and forth near the television. "I can't explain how I feel," he said turning his attention to his wife, who was leaning against the wall wailing. "Whenever I see my wife, it's very hard," he said quietly.

Ali Jaffar, 37, awaits impatiently in the salon as well. He said that his cousin was flying through Ethiopia on his way to Congo, where he has business. "We don't know anything," he said through tears. "I was close to him. Nobody knows anything."

Mohammad Kamal Akoush, a 25 year old Lebanese young man was also onboard. His family members and cousins wait intolerantly and so far know nothing about him.

His cousin who expressed high levels of frustration due to the lack of information has been going backa nad forth, from the airport to the hospital, but still no information on whether he was found or not.

The victims' relatives were frustrated with the lack of information available. Though President Michel Sleiman and other officials warned families not to jump to conclusions and asked them to wait for official news, rumors still circulated. Some people clung to a story about a man swimming to shore shortly after the crash.


The plane, a Boeing 737, was carrying 90 passengers and crew on its way to Addis Ababa and went down at about 2:30 a.m. local time in stormy weather.
According to Minister of Transportation and Public Works Ghazi Aridi, the airliner lost contact with the control tower shortly after takeoff and crashed into the sea about 12 kilometers (seven miles) south of the airport. Some witnesses reported seeing a ball of fire plunge into the water.

On board were 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi, one Syrian, and one French national. So far, 25 bodies were pulled from the sea-among which are the bodies of two children-, as well as that of Marla Sanchez, the wife of French Ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton.

The bodies will be finally brought to Hariri Governmental Hospital, where the process of recognizing the bodies will take place.