The pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed into the sea shortly after take-off from Beirut performed "a very fast and strange turn before disappearing from the radar", Lebanon's transportation minister has said.
All 90 people on board are feared dead.
Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi said the pilot flew in the opposite direction to that recommended by the Beirut control tower after taking off at 2.30am local time on Monday, during a night of lightning and thunderstorms.
The tower "asked him to correct his path but he did a very fast and strange turn before disappearing completely from the radar", Mr Aridi said.
It was not clear why that happened or whether it was beyond the pilot's control.
Like most other airliners, the Boeing 737 is equipped with its own onboard weather radar which the pilot may have used to avoid flying into thunderheads.
No survivors have been found more than 24 hours after the crash. Emergency workers have pulled bodies from the Mediterranean Sea and the numbers reported so far range from a dozen to more than 20.
Searchers were trying to find the plane's black box and flight data recorder, which are key to determining the cause of the crash.
An aviation analyst familiar with the investigation said Beirut air traffic control was guiding the Ethiopian flight through the thunderstorms for the first two to three minutes of its flight. The official, who asked not to be identified, said this was standard procedure by Lebanese controllers to assist airliners departing from the airport in poor weather conditions.
Ethiopian Airlines said the pilot had more than 20 years of experience. It did not give his name or details of other aircraft he had flown. It said the recovered bodies included those of Ethiopians and Lebanese, as well as two Britons.
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