Ethiopian Airlines Boeing jet crashes\, killing 157

This is the site where an Ehtiopian Airlines plane crashed on Sunday - just six minutes after taking off and killing all 157 people onboard.

The Boeing 737 jet, heading to Nairobi, was the MAX 8 - the same plane that crashed in Indonesia in October, killing 189, raising questions about the safety of the new model.

The flight left the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa at 8.38 am local time, before losing contact with the control tower.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) KENYAN TRANSPORT MINISTER, JAMES MACHARIA, SAYING: "We can now confirm that there were at least 35 nationalities... So, among the most affected, as you may expect, is Kenya which had about 32 passengers on board out of the 149 passengers... Canada with 18..

France and the UK with seven each... The U.S.A with eight." This was the flight path of the jet.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on its Twitter feed the flight had unstable vertical speed after take off.

The 737 is the world's best selling modern passenger aircraft and one of the industry's most reliable.

In a news conference, Ethiopian's CEO said the the plane had no recorded technical problems. And the pilot was a member of the airline's staff with a quote "excellent" flying record and over 200 flight hours.

At Nairobi airport, many relatives were left waiting at the gate for hours, with no information from airport authorities.

Some learned of the crash from journalists.

Kenyan officials arrived at the airport five hours after the plane went down.

Families were taken to Nairobi's Sheraton hotel, but said they were still waiting to hear from airline staff eight hours after the accident.

State-owned Ethiopian Airlines is one of the biggest carriers on the continent by fleet size.

Its last major crash was in January 2010, when a flight from Beirut went down shortly after take-off.