By Sultan Bin Bandar

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The brother and uncle of Saad Khalaf Al-Mutairi, who is believed to be among the victims of the ill-fated Ethiopian Boeing 737 Max, which crashed after take off en route to Nairobi, have arrived in Addis Ababa to recognize his body.

Abdullah Al-Arjani, Saudi ambassador to Ethiopia, said the duo arrived in Addis Ababa on Monday to identify Al-Mutairi’s body and to do DNA tests for confirmation.

The ambassador said Al-Mutairi’s brother and uncle would join the ongoing search for the bodies.

“We have not been informed about the death of Al-Mutairi in the crash. The Ethiopian authorities may have already found the body but they will only inform us after the completion of the formal procedures,” he said.

The ambassador did not dismiss the possibility that the Ethiopian authorities might have found the body and said as soon as they were sure the body was of Al-Mutairi, they would announce this publicly.

The 37-year-old Al-Mutairi was an x-ray technician at King Saud Medical City where he worked for about five years.

He took a vacation from his job last week to travel to Kenya to recruit manpower for a recruitment office he owned.

The Dammam-based Al-Yaum newspaper said Al-Mutairi’s elderly parents, who live in Al-Qassim, did not know about his death but would be informed as soon as the body of their son was found and returned to his hometown.

According to sources in the search team, the bodies were completely burned so it was difficult to identify them.

Another Saudi, nicknamed Abu Ahmed, was waiting for his son at Nairobi airport when an airport official told him that the plane had crashed.

He started crying and then his mobile phone rang. It was his son who called him from Addis Ababa telling him he had missed the flight.

His tears of sorrow suddenly became tears of joy.

Another survivor, who is a Greek named Antonis Mavropoulos, said on his Twitter account that he missed the flight because he found the gate closed when he arrived only two minutes late.

“There was nobody to help me cross the gate so I missed the flight and the plane took off without me,” he said.