Ethiopian plane 'exploded' after take-off: Minister

The wreckage of the Ethiopian Airlines plane, which crashed into the Mediterranean sea on January 25, is seen after being recovered off the coast of Lebanon. Search teams retrieved on Sunday flight recorders belonging to an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed off the coast of Lebanon last month killing all 90 people aboard. –Reuters Photo

BEIRUT: An Ethiopian jet which crashed off Lebanon's coast last month exploded after take-off, Lebanon's health minister said on Tuesday in the first such official comment since the mysterious crash.

Remarks by Jawad Khalifeh could not be immediately confirmed by other officials in Beirut and came as Ethiopian Airlines said one of the plane's black boxes has been sent to France for analysis.

“The plane exploded during flight and the cabin, as well as the bodies of those on board were dispersed into the sea, in different locations,” Khalifeh said to explain why some corpses were found dismembered.

“The first bodies which have been retrieved following the crash were intact but after that, we began to find body pieces or mutilated corpses,” he told reporters.

Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi refused to comment on the reported explosion. “I have no information about this,” he told AFP.

Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 plunged into the Mediterranean before dawn on January 25, just minutes after take-off from Beirut airport during a storm.

It was bound for Addis Ababa with 83 passengers and seven crew on board. No survivors were found and searchers have been struggling to recover bodies as most victims were believed to be still strapped to their seats.

There have been conflicting reports as to whether the jet exploded while airborne or after it hit the water, and officials have said there will be no answers until the data from the black boxes is analysed.

Lebanon has ruled out sabotage, blaming the bad weather for the tragedy, and officials have said the captain was instructed by the control tower to change to a certain heading but then the aircraft took a different course.

Experts have told AFP that the stormy weather may not have been the only reason for the crash, and that the aircraft may have had engine or hydraulics problems.

Witnesses have said they saw a ball of fire as the plane plunged into the sea and a defence ministry official said on the day of the tragedy that the plane broke into four pieces before crashing in the Mediterranean.

Lebanese army divers retrieved one of the plane's two black boxes on Sunday and Ethiopian Airlines said it has been sent to France for analysis.

“We cannot say when we'll have news because it is a process and there is an investigation,” spokeswoman Wogayehu Terefe told AFP in Addis Ababa.

Wogayehu said more bodies had been retrieved but said they were still waiting for an exact figure. Twenty three bodies had been found by Sunday.

The probe into the mysterious crash is being carried out by a Lebanese commission with support from a French body responsible for technical investigations of air accidents.US and Ethiopian investigators are also involved.

Lebanese leak information on Ethiopian jet crash investigation

EDITOR'S NOTE: Any investigation conducted by the regimes in Lebanon and Ethiopia cannot be taken seriously. Both of them seem to have some thing to hide. The Lebanese, in particular, are acting in a highly suspicious manner.

BEIRUT (Reuters) — Pilot error caused the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane off the coast of Lebanon last month which killed all 90 people on board, a source familiar with the investigation into the accident said on Tuesday.

"The investigation team has reached an early conclusion that it was pilot error, based on the information from the black box," the source told Reuters.

An investigation team involving Lebanese, French and Ethiopian officials had headed to France on Monday with the flight recorders, commonly known as "black boxes", for analysis.

The Boeing 737-800 plane crashed minutes after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather on January 25, plunging in a ball of fire into the sea.

The pilot had failed to respond to the control tower's request to change direction even though he acknowledged their demands. The plane made a sharp turn before disappearing off the radar, the Lebanese transport minister said at the time.

The eight-year-old plane, carrying mostly Lebanese and Ethiopian passengers, last had a maintenance check on December 25 and no technical problems had been found. It was bound for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Since retrieving the flight recorders from the Mediterranean on Sunday, Lebanese and international search teams have also located parts of the plane's fuselage, where most of the victims' bodies are believed trapped.

The bodies of at least 23 victims have been recovered so far.

I doubt we'll ever know the truth.