BEIRUT – Lebanese Public Works and Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi said on Tuesday that Syrian officials have informed him that a part of an Ethiopian airliner which crashed off the Lebanese coast last week has been found in Syrian waters. The recovered wreckage will be transported to the Lebanese authorities, Aridi added.
On January 25, an Ethiopian airliner carrying 90 passengers, among them 54 Lebanese, crashed off the coast of Lebanon four minutes after take-off from Beirut International Airport. Usually the flight data and cockpit voice recorders send electronic signal to facilitate the recovery of the plane.
According to a Lebanese army source, signals were detected about 14KM off the coast, south of the airport at a depth of 1,300m, and it may take several days to recover the black boxes and analyse the data.
U.S. sub to help recover black boxes
BEIRUT, Feb 2 (AP) — A Lebanese army official said Monday a vessel carrying a submarine is on its way to help in the search for an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last week south of Beirut.
The Boeing 737 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on Jan. 25 just minutes after takeoff from Beirut in a fierce thunderstorm. All 90 people on board were presumed dead and the plane’s black box and main body have not been found.
A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Ramage, has detected signals from the black box flight recorders at a depth of 4,265 feet (1,300 meters).
The army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he does not know when the vessels will arrive. Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi has said the “submarine has left and should be here in the next few days.”
Lebanon’s government has formally asked the U.S.-based Odyssey Marine Explorations to send a submarine to help in retrieving the plane and the black box. Another ship for the company, Ocean Alert, has been scanning Lebanese waters since after the crash to try find the body of the plane and the black box.
The army official also said French investigators were working closely with the Lebanese navy. The wife of the France’s ambassador to Lebanon was aboard the plane and a service was held for her at a Beirut church Sunday.
Rescue teams have recovered some bodies and pieces of the plane, but hope for finding any survivors has faded. There are conflicting numbers of how many bodies have been found, although at least 14 have been pulled out of the waters.
Also Monday an Iraqi man who died on the plane was buried in a Shiite Muslim cemetery south of Beirut, an Iraqi diplomat said. The 55-year-old Akram Jasim Mohammed was buried next to his son and daughter who died in a car accident in Beirut last year, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he was not being authorized to speak to the media about the matter.
Search crews hunt for black boxes
BEIRUT, Jan 31 (AFP) –
Salvage teams turned over debris to the Lebanese army, as they scoured the seabed for the black boxes of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed off Beirut, presumably killing 90 people.
Among the remains of the wreck handed over were personal effects and plane seats recovered from the around the area where the Boeing 737-800 crashed into the sea soon after takeoff during a raging thunderstorm on Monday.
Lebanon said the Odyssey Explorer, a vessel operated by a private US firm that specialises in underwater recovery, would be sent in as soon as the exact location of the black boxes was determined.
The cabinet had ‘asked that the Odyssey Explorer … be sent to intervene as soon as the block boxes are located,’ Information Minister Tarek Mitri said.
Searchers on Wednesday picked up the signals of the black boxes from the Ethiopian Airlines jet, and have been trying to pinpoint their exact location ever since.
Mitri had said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which are known as the black boxes and emit an electronic signal to facilitate recovery, were thought to be 14 kilometres off the coast at a depth of 1,500 metres.
But an army spokesman said the exact location of the black boxes was yet to be pinpointed.
‘The search still hasn’t uncovered anything,’ the spokesman told AFP.
‘The decision is to continue searching,’ he said, adding rescuers were ‘following the signals emitted by the black boxes’.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said on Friday that two-thirds of the area where the black boxes were thought to be lying had been searched.
The Ocean Alert, another vessel operated by the same US company that owns the Odyssey Explorer and specialises in undersea recovery, has been sweeping the area in which the signals were detected.
Once the boxes were retrieved, they would be sent to a decoding centre overseas, possibly in France, sources close to the investigation have told Agence France-Presse.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 was bound for Addis Ababa when it went down early on Monday morning.
All 83 passengers and seven crew are presumed dead. Most of those on board were Ethiopians and Lebanese.
Only 14 bodies, including those of two toddlers, and body parts have been found so far.
Rescue officials have said a number of the victims’ remains may still be strapped to their seats underwater.
There were conflicting reports as to whether the jet exploded while airborne or after it had hit the water, and officials have said there will be no answers until the data from the black boxes is retrieved and analysed.
Officials want to know why the plane veered off course after takeoff, but have ruled out sabotage.
