Investigators were tonight carrying out DNA tests on severely burned bodies recovered from the sea after an Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 90 people caught fire during a lightning storm and crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after taking off from Beirut.
As darkness fell no survivors had been found in the stormy waters off Lebanon, despite search and rescue efforts by the country's military, UN naval peacekeepers and units from nearby Cyprus who were tonight joined by British and French helicopter teams.
The plane's 83 passengers included 56 Lebanese – two with dual British nationality – 22 Ethiopians and individuals from Canada, Syria, Iraq and Russia, as well as the American-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon. By tonight at least 34 bodies had been recovered.
Lebanon's National News Agency tonight confirmed that 57-year-old Afif Karshat was one of two Lebanese with dual British nationality among the casualties.
Lebanon's president, Michel Suleiman, said terrorism was not suspected in the crash of the Boeing 737-800, which was headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. "Sabotage is ruled out as of now," he said. Lebanon's defence minister, Elias Murr, blamed bad weather for the crash. An official investigation has been launched, but the plane's black box has yet to be recovered.
Several eyewitnesses reported hearing an explosion and seeing a ball of flame in the sky just after 2.30am today, during a fierce winter thunderstorm.
"There was huge thunder and it was raining like crazy. The lightning was coming down from the clouds. The electricity had gone out, but I couldn't sleep. Then I heard an explosion," said Hassan Ramadan, a 39-year-old engineering contractor from Khalde, just a few miles from where the plane went down.
"I thought it was a building collapsing. I opened the window and saw a huge flame going down in different pieces. I can't believe what happened. You usually only see that on TV," he said.
The prime minister, Saad Hariri, who toured the crash site by helicopter, declared a day of mourning in honour of the dead. "This is a tragedy for Lebanon, and we are working to find the missing passengers," he told reporters. Divers from the country's tiny navy were on the scene within a couple of hours of the crash and continued to be winched in and out of the churning grey seas throughout the day as the bodies and personal belongings of passengers washed up on beaches just south of the capital.
Mothers and relatives of those killed wept and screamed as ambulances brought the burned bodies for identification at the governmental hospital in Beirut. At the airport families of those missing sat in shock, waiting for news, some weeping silently, others collapsing as they tried to walk outside.
Specialist trauma psychologists were sent to the airport to try and comfort distraught families.
"We've never suffered a catastrophe like this air crash before in Lebanon," said Dr Mirna Ghannage, from the Centre for Mental Health.
Riad Ismael's 36-year-old nephew Yasser was among those missing. Like so many in this nation of expatriates, Yasser had left Lebanon soon after graduating, having been unable to find a job. After five years working in a Lebanese restaurant in London he moved to Sudan to pursue his speciality – computer engineering – before starting his own business in Angola. The young father had taken time off to fly home to Lebanon via Ethiopia to visit his wife and two children, aged five and two.
"When we find answers to who is responsible for this crash we have to ask another question: why does the young generation of Lebanese have to live in exile?" said Riad Ismael, the mayor of a village near the south Lebanon town of Nabatiyeh.
"Yasser is like all young guys in Lebanon. , His motives were to build a better future and provide for his family. He was far away from his family and always wanted to return home. He came home to give them money and then died. It is a tragedy."
Many of the Ethiopians killed in the crash were also economic migrants, but in the reverse direction – young women who left homes and families to travel to Lebanon to work as domestic helpers in the homes of wealthy Lebanese.
Many are treated as little more than slaves, human rights activists claim. In many cases servants go unpaid, are confined indoors and made to work long hours seven days a week. Some are beaten and even sometimes raped.
"Why do you Lebanese never treat us good?" screamed one Ethiopian woman as security forces prevented her from entering the governmental hospital in Beirut today to identify a body. "We are human beings like you. God created us. Why don't I have the right to come in and see my sister?"
Outside the hospital a group of Ethiopian women stood quietly in a corner, waiting for news of friends on the flight – young women like the friend they knew as Warkey, who arrived in Lebanon to work for a family in Nabatiyeh,
"She had worked for two years and her family had not paid her salary once," said one of Warkey's friends, who asked not to be named. "She even had to buy her own clothes. So she ran away and I took her in. But she said she missed her parents so much and had to go home. She was only 20.
"We went to the embassy and they did not help. Because she had run away and did not have any papers, she ended up being arrested and put in prison," she said, her dark brown eyes welling up with tears.
"They let her out of prison on Saturday and drove her to the airport, so she could take that flight."