Lebanese and international rescue services widened their search on Tuesday for the victims and missing flight recorders of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the sea shortly after takeoff from Beirut.
Ships including a U.S. naval vessel and European and U.N. peacekeeping helicopters searched through the night for the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 that plunged into the Mediterranean in a ball of fire on Monday.
Ninety people, mostly Lebanese and Ethiopians, were on board Flight ET409 headed to Addis Ababa before it disappeared off the radar five minutes after takeoff.
Lebanese officials said 14 bodies, including those of two toddlers, had been recovered so far. They said an earlier total they gave of 24 was incorrect.
The plane had apparently broken up in the air before plunging into the sea and Lebanon has ruled out terrorism as the reason for the crash.
A Lebanese security official said recovery teams would widen their search perimeter off the Na’ameh coast, 10 km (six miles) south of the capital, after rough seas and high waves hampered them during the night.
“They need to pinpoint the location of the wreckage and then launch a dive there,” the official said, to try and find the data recorders that would give a clearer picture of what went wrong. Many relatives were angry the plane had been allowed to take off in bad weather.
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