Thousands of Ethiopians have attended a mass funeral ceremony in the country’s capital, a week after a plane crash killed 157 people.
Some victims’ relatives fainted and fell to the ground during the procession through Addis Ababa on Sunday. Seventeen empty caskets were laid to rest in remembrance of the victims from Ethiopia.
The victims came from 35 countries. Officials have begun delivering bags of earth to family members instead of the remains because the identification process is going to take such a long time.
The funerals took place as the country’s transport minister said the black box from the crash was in good condition.
Dagmawit Moges told reporters that data so far shows there is a “clear similarity” between the Ethiopian Airlines crash and an earlier one in Indonesia that involved the same type of plane.
Earlier, it emerged families are being given a 1kg sack of scorched earth taken from the crash sites.
“The soil came as it became impossible to identify bodies and hand over remains to family members,” a family member said.
“We will not rest until we are given the real body or body parts of our loved ones.”
However, authorities say they will issue death certificates within two weeks.
Interpol and Blake Emergency Services, hired by Ethiopian Airlines, will work with Ethiopian police and health officials to identify the bodies, Dagmawit Moges, Ethiopia’s Minister of Transport said on Saturday.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has sent about 16 members to assist the investigation, she said.
In Paris, investigators started studying the cockpit voice recorder of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet on Saturday.
The French air accident investigation agency BEA tweeted on Saturday that technical work on the recorder began.
The BEA also said work resumed on the flight’s data recorders.
The recorders, also known as black boxes, were sent to France because the BEA has extensive expertise in analysing such devices.
Experts from the US National Transportation Safety Board and the plane’s manufacturer Boeing are among those involved in the investigation.
The Ethiopian disaster and a crash last year in Indonesia were both of the Boeing 737 Max 8 planes.
The United States and many other countries have grounded the Max 8s.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said regulators had new data from satellite-based tracking that showed the movements of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed off Indonesia in October, killing 189 people.
Boeing said it supports the grounding of its planes as a precautionary step, while reiterating “full confidence” in their safety.
