Ethiopia crash bodies will take days to release

Families of those killed aboard Ethiopia Airlines flight 302 must wait at least five days to begin receiving some victims’ remains, the company said on Tuesday, though the identification of others is expected to take much longer, Reuters reported.

Trailing smoke and sparks, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into a field minutes after take-off on Sunday from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people aboard.

“The process of identifying the victims will take at least five days,” Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw told reporters in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

“Families will be notified.”

Due to the impact and ensuing fire, the identification of some remains could take weeks or months and may need to be done via dental records or DNA, an industry expert told Reuters.

The process will be complicated because the passengers came from more than 30 countries and Ethiopia has limited forensic capabilities, the expert added, asking not to be named.

Noordin Mohamed, a 27-year-old Kenyan businessman, said his family had no information about when they might be able to bury his brother and mother, who is a dual British-Kenyan citizen.

“We are Muslim and have to bury our deceased immediately. Now we cannot even recover any bodies,” he told Reuters in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. “Losing a brother and mother in the same day and not having their bodies to bury is very painful.”