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Wreckage is piled at the site where an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed near Bishoftu, south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Photo: AP

Smoke and debris poured from Ethiopian Airlines’ Boeing 737, scattering cattle as it plunged to its doom, witnesses say

  • Witnesses described a ‘loud rattling sound’ coming from the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 as it fell from the skies
  • The plane’s black box flight recorders have been recovered from the crash site

The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed killing 157 people was making a strange rattling noise and trailed smoke and debris as it swerved above a field of panicked cows before hitting earth, according to witnesses.

Flight 302 took off from the Ethiopian capital on Sunday morning bound for Nairobi with passengers from more than 30 countries. All on board the Boeing 737 MAX 8 died.

Authorities in Ethiopia, China and Indonesia grounded all Boeing 737 MAX 8s on Monday, and investigators found the flight recorders in the field where the plane went down. An airline official, however, said one of the recorders was partially damaged and “we will see what we can retrieve from it.”

The pilot had requested permission to return, saying he was having problems – but it was too late.

Half a dozen witnesses interviewed in the farmland where the plane came down reported smoke billowing out behind, while four of them also described a loud sound.

Rescuers work at the crash site of the of an Ethiopian Airlines 737. Photo: Xinhua

“It was a loud rattling sound. Like straining and shaking metal,” said Turn Buzuna, a 26-year-old housewife and farmer who lives about 300 metres from the crash site.

“Everyone says they have never heard that kind of sound from a plane and they are under a flight path,” she added.

Malka Galato, 47, a barley and wheat farmer whose field the plane crashed in, also described smoke and sparks from the back. “The plane was very close to the ground and it made a turn … Cows that were grazing in the fields ran in panic,” he said.

Wreckage from the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 is strewn in a field. Photo: EPA

Tamirat Abera, 25, was walking past the field at the time. He said the plane turned sharply, trailing white smoke and items like clothes and papers, then crashed about 300 metres away.

“It tried to climb but it failed and went down nose first,” he said. “There was fire and white smoke which then turned black.”

As the plane was loaded with fuel. The flight had set off Sunday morning from Ethiopia’s capital, before it faltered and ploughed into the earth six minutes later.

At the site, Red Cross workers in masks and white gloves sifted gently through victims’ belongings. Children’s books – Dr Seuss’s Oh, the Thinks You Can Think and Anne of Green Gables – lay near a French-English dictionary burnt along one edge.

A woman’s brown handbag, the bottom burnt, lay open next to an empty bottle of perfume.

A tattered book, its pages singed, appeared to be about macroeconomics, its passages highlighted by a careful reader in yellow and pink.

There was a shattered keyboard. And playfully printed T-shirts. There was even a ringing mobile phone, picked up by a searcher and silenced.

The dead came from 35 countries.

The aircraft was broken into small pieces, the largest among them a wheel and a dented engine. The debris was spread over land roughly the size of two football fields.

Workers carry wreckage at the site where an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed near Bishoftu, south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Photo: EPA

“When it was hovering, fire was following its tail, then it tried to lift its nose,” said another witness, Gadisa Benti. “When it passed over our house, the nose pointed down and the tail raised up. It went straight to the ground with its nose, it then exploded.”

Local resident Nigusu Tesema helped gather victims’ scattered identity papers to hand to police.

“We are shocked and saddened,” he said.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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