None of the 157 people on board an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed on Sunday morning en route to Nairobi from Addis Ababa has survived, the airline said.

The aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 carrying 149 passengers and eight crew members, took off at 08.38am (05:38 GMT) and lost contact with air traffic controllers six minutes later.

It crashed near Bishoftu, southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash of the plane, which was new and had been delivered to the airline in November. The pilot, who had been working for the carrier since 2010, sent out a distress call shortly after take-off and was given clearance to return.

Tewolde Gebremariam, the airline’s CEO, visited the scene of the crash and confirmed no one had survived.

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