Remains of Kenyans who Died in Ethiopian Plane Crash Arrive in Nairobi

The remains of 28 out of 36 Kenyans who lost their lives in the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash in March this year arrived in Nairobi on Monday morning.

The remains were received at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) by Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma and her Transport counterpart James Macharia

Families of the deceased also converged at the airport to receive the remains of their loved ones and held a requiem mass in memory of the victims.

In September, the International Police (Interpol) announced its Incident Response Team had identified all the 157 persons who perished after the Nairobi-bound flight went down six minutes after leaving Ethiopia’s Bole International Airport.

Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock said the agency worked with 100 Disaster Victim Identification experts from 14 countries in an exercise that lasted 50 days. Interpol said 48 persons were matched through fingerprints.

The process of identifying remains of the crash victims was coordinated by Interpol’s Special Representative Office at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa following a request by Ethiopian authorities.

Six Kenyan families have since sued giant US airplane manufacturer Boeing following the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.

Passengers who died in the accident were from 35 different nationalities with Kenyans being the majority.

Other countries that lost their citizens included: Canada (18), Egypt (6), Ethiopia (9), France (7), the US (8), Netherlands (5), Slovakia (4), Sweden (3), China (8) and the United Kingdom (7).

Spain, Israel, Morocco and Poland lost two nationals each while Belgium, Indonesia, Ireland, Mozambique, Norway, Saudi, Sudan, Somalia, Serbia, Togo, Uganda, Yemeni, Nepal, Nigeria lost one each.

Boeing has already offered a compensation package of Sh15 million for each of the persons killed in the crash.