Ethiopian Airlines crash : One of the Moroccan victims died on his birthday

One of the two Moroccan nationals who were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday, died on the same day as his birthday, reports Gulf News which made a list of the Arab victims on board the ill-fated Ethiopian Boeing 737 Max 8.

The victim is the Moroccan official at the Ministry of Energy and Ecologist Ben Ahmed Chihab. The latter was attending an UN-backed panel on the Convention on Biodiversity, flying to Nairobi on his birthday : 10th of March.

«On his official Facebook page, there were several messages to congratulate him on his birthday», the same source said, adding that after Chihab’s death was announced messages of condolence showered the page.

60-year-old Ben Ahmed Chihab, who was the regional director of environment from the Draa Tafilalet region, was not the only Moroccan national to die in the tragic crash. The second victim is El Hassan Essayouti, 63, a professor at the Hassan II University in Casablanca, who is specialized in nuclear physics.

For the record, the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, Sunday, 6 minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa near Bishoftu, located 60 km away from the capital, wrote ENA quoting the Prime Minister’s office.

Among the 157 people killed in the crash, 12 passengers were Arab : six Egyptians, two Moroccans and one Sudan, Somali, a Saudi and a Yemeni, concluded the same source.