Senior Ugandan Police officer not on board ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines plane - AIGP Kasingye

Police have dispelled as not true, the reports that one of their own senior officer was aboard the ill-fated Boeing 737 Ethiopain Airlines aircraft that crashed shortly after taking off from Adis Ababa.

Following the disaster in which all the 157 people including the crew aboard were confirmed dead, reports started circulating on social media that Commissioner of Police, Christine Alalo working with AMISOM police had died.

However, police Chief Political Commissar, AIGP Asan Kasingye said Alalo who was travelling to Mogadishu from Italy never used Ethiopian Airlines on his journey from Italy as had been alleged.

“This officer is safe. She wasn’t on the plane. She flew Turkish. This is information I am getting from our officers in Mogadishu. She had travelled to Italy with Turkish Airlines,”Kasingye said.

The Ethiopian Airlines aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff en route to Nairobi on Sunday killing all the 149 passengers aboard and the eight member crew.

One Ugandan died whereas Kenya with 32 had the largest number of nationals who died in the crash but the identities of the dead are yet to be released by authorities.

According to the Ethiopian Airlines CEO, Tewolde GebreMariam, the pilot of the Nairobi-bound Boeing 737 that crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa had alerted controllers “he had difficulties” and wanted to turn back the plane carrying 157 people.

“The pilot was given clearance to return to Addis,” Tewolde told journalists in response to a question on whether there was any distress call.

He said investigations into the actual cause of the plane crash are still ongoing.