No borders to pain
157 dead in Ethiopian Airlines crash came from 35 countries
THEY were physicians, aid workers, college professors, students and United Nations staffers.
The 157 people on board the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday (local time) came from all walks of life and all over the world.
Family members spanning 35 countries were yesterday grieving for those who died after the aircraft plummeted to the ground not long after leaving Addis Ababa.
Those killed came from countries including Kenya (32), Canada (18), Ethiopia (9), China (8), Italy (8), the US (8), France (7) and the UK (7).
The United Nations migration agency announced the UN and its agencies would fly flags at half-mast after 19 of its employees died in the crash.
A statement issued yesterday said the organisations would include the World Bank and International Telecommunications Union.
One of the agency’s staffers, Anne-Katrin Feigl, was a German national who was en route to a training course in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the plane’s destination.
The father of British UN worker Joanna Toole said the 36-year-old was also travelling for her “vocation”.
Adrian Toole said his daughter was a fervent environmentalist who had worked on animal welfare issues since she was a child.
He said: “Joanna’s work was not a job, it was her vocation.”
Ms Toole was one of seven British nationals confirmed to have died in the crash.
“Joanna was genuinely one of those people who you never heard a bad word about,” Mr Toole said.
A politician from the Slovak Parliament also announced that his wife, daughter and son were killed in the crash. Anton Hrnko, a legislator for the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party, said he was “in deep grief” over the deaths of his wife, Blanka, son, Martin, and daughter, Michala. The family was on vacation at the time of the incident.
Also killed was Pius Adesanmi, a Nigerian professor with Carleton University in Canada, who was on his way to a meeting of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council in Nairobi.
He was director of Carleton’s Institute of African Studies, according to the university’s website.
Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer confirmed that three Austrian doctors in their early 30s were also on board the flight. The men were on their way to Zanzibar, he said, but he could not confirm the purpose of their trip.
Irishman Michael Ryan was among the dead from the UN Food Programme. The Rome-based aid worker worked on several projects including creating safe ground for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
Ethiopian Airlines said yesterday it had grounded its Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet “as an extra safety precaution”.
China also grounded its fleet of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 in the aftermath.
Investigations into the cause of the crash were ongoing yesterday.