The 157 people killed when an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa on Sunday morning might have included two Israeli citizens, the Ynet news site reported.
The Boeing 737 passenger jet to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard, the airline said, and there were no survivors, according to the state broadcaster.
Israel's Foreign Ministry has opened up an incident room in Jerusalem and was waiting for the passenger manifest from the flight, which took off from Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8.38 a.m. local time, before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8.44 a.m.
"There are no survivors onboard the flight, which carried passengers from 33 countries," said state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, quoting an unidentified source at the airline.
Flight ET 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 62 kilometers southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, the airline said, adding that the plane was a Boeing 737-800 MAX, registration number ET-AVJ.
"Search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties," the airline said in a statement.
The flight had unstable vertical speed after takeoff, said flight-tracking website Flightradar24 on its Twitter feed.
The Ethiopian prime minister's office sent condolences via Twitter to the families of those lost in the crash.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a message of condolence to the families of the crash victims and said that the Israeli government was trying to determine whether any of its citizens had been on board the ill-fated flight.
