The Interpol announced on Sunday that the successful completion of the identification procedures of all victims of the Ethiopian Airline plane crash in March this year that left all 157 people dead on board.
“The Interpol Incident Response Team (IRT) deployed after the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane in March has completed its task, assisting with the successful identification of all victims of the deadly disaster,” Xinhua news agency reported citing the France-based agency as saying in a statement.
The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, eventually killing all 157 passengers and flight crew members from 35 countries aboard the Nairobi-bound flight.
At the request of the Ethiopian authorities, two days after the accident INTERPOL sent an IRT to assist with the operation. The team’s role was to coordinate the international police disaster victim identification (DVI) response and coordinating the antemortem data supplied by member countries.
In October 2018, a Lion Air flight of the same model had crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
The two crashes led to an indefinite grounding of the MAX 8 aircraft all across the world.
Nearly 100 DVI experts from 14 countries in Africa, the Americas and Europe supported the work of the IRT during its 50-day mission.
In 2019, INTERPOL has deployed five IRTs around the world, including to assist with investigative efforts following terrorist attacks at several sites in Sri Lanka in April and at a hotel complex in Kenya in January.
(With agencies inputs)