Ethiopian Airlines crash: Six members of Canadian family on safari holiday among dead

Six members of the same were among those killed when an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet crashed.

Fourteen-year-old Ashka and 13-year-old Anushka Dixit were among the 157 who died, along with their parents and grandparents, when the Boeing 747 went it came down shortly after it took off from Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa on Sunday.

Their 37-year-old mother Kosha Vaidya, 45-year-old father Prerit Dixit, 71-year-old grandfather Pannagesh Vaidya and 63-year-old grandmother Hansini Vaidya also died.

The Canadian family were travelling to a safari holiday.

The mother’s brother, Manant Vaidya, said the family holiday to Kenya would have been the first time his sister had visited her birthplace in decades. He added that the teenage girls were excited to see all of the animals without cages during the safari.

They were among killed 149 passengers and eight crew members from 33 different countries, who died in the disaster.

Nine Britons were also killed. Sam Pegram, 25, from Lancashire, was named as one of the UK victims.

Described as “very special” by his parents, the aid worker, who had been based in Geneva since January, worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council. He was on his way to Nairobi, in Kenya, with a colleague to deliver a training programme.

Joanna Toole, 36, from Exmouth, in Devon, was on the plane heading to Nairobi to attend the United Nations Environment Assembly.

Irishman Michael Ryan was among seven dead from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), which distributes huge amounts of rations every year to those in need.

The Rome-based aid worker and engineer, known as Mick, who was formerly from Lahinch in Co Clare, was believed to have been married with two children.

Joseph Waithaka, a 55-year-old who lived in Hull for a decade before moving back to his native Kenya, also died in the crash.

Polar expert Sarah Auffret died on the flight as she made her way to Nairobi to talk about a Clean Seas project, her Norway-based employers Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators (AECO) said.

Norwegian media reported that the University of Plymouth graduate was a French-British dual national.

Anton Hrnko, a lawmaker from Slovakia, shared his “deep grief” after his wife, Blanka, and two grown children, Martin and Michala, died in the crash.

Jared Mwazo Babu, who founded a Nairobi-based marketing agency, and his wife, Mercy Ndivo, both died, leaving behind a 15-month-old daughter.

Husband and wife Aleksandr and Ekaterina Polyakov, who both worked for Russia’s Sberbank, were among at least three Russians on board.

The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just six minutes after taking off from the capital

Both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the wreckage.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.