Mourners wail in grief amid mass funeral for victims of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302
Thousands pay their respects to some of the 157 people killed when a Boeing 737 MAX 8 came down outside Addis Ababa last week.
Sunday 17 March 2019 16:47, UK
A mass funeral ceremony has taken place for victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, with 17 empty caskets draped in the nation's flag carried through the streets of Addis Ababa.
Thousands of mourners attended the service in the capital city, and some of the victims' relatives fainted and fell to the ground.
Flight ET302 crashed shortly after take-off on Sunday 10 March, killing 157 people. The victims came from 35 countries, and many humanitarian workers were on board.
On Saturday, officials began delivering bags of scorched mud from the crash site to relatives of those who died - amid warnings that identifying their remains is expected to take a long time.
Forensic DNA work to identify those who died may take six months, but authorities say they will issue death certificates within two weeks.
Relatives said they would not be content until work had been carried out to reunite them with their loved ones' remains.
One family member said: "The soil came as it became impossible to identify bodies and hand over remains to family members.
"We will not rest until we are given the real body or body parts of our loved ones."
At Bole International Airport, weeping women held white roses in their shaking hands before lunging forward, wailing in grief over caskets.
On Saturday night, French air accident investigators confirmed they had successfully downloaded data from the jet's cockpit voice recorder.
The French agency said they had sent the audio files to Ethiopian authorities without listening to them.
A source who listened to the recording in Addis Ababa told the Reuters news agency that a voice from the cockpit had requested to climb to 14,000ft above sea level - about 6,400ft above the airport - before urgently asking to return.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says satellite tracking data shows the plane made similar manoeuvres to those of another flight involving a Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane that crashed.
Lion Air Flight 610 came down into the sea off Indonesia in October, killing all 189 people on board.
Both crashes flew with erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to bring the aircraft under control.
Shortly after take-off, both crews tried to return to the airports but crashed.
The US and many other countries, including the UK, have now grounded MAX 8s.
There are suspicions faulty sensors and software contributed to the two crashes.