NAIROBI (REUTERS) – An Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi crashed on Sunday morning (March 10), Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said. 

A spokesman for the airlines told Reuters the flight crashed early on Sunday with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard.

Flight ET 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 62km south-east of the capital Addis Ababa, the airline said, confirming the plane was a Boeing 737-800 Max.

“It is confirmed it happened 8.44 (am),” said the spokesman, who did not give his name.

The Ethiopian prime minister’s official Twitter account expressed condolences to the families of those lost in the flight.

“The office of the PM, on behalf of government and people of Ethiopia, would like to express it’s deepest condolences to the families that have lost their loved ones on Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 on regular scheduled flight to Nairobi, Kenya this morning,” the PM’s office said on Twitter.

The Boeing 737-800 Max is the same type of plane as the Indonesian Lion Air jet that crashed last October, 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

The last major accident involving an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane was a Boeing 737-800 that exploded after taking off from Lebanon in 2010, killing 83 passengers and seven crew.

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