June 4, 2009 - The Daily Star - Lebanon family of airfrance passenger await news about crash

By Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff

SIDON: The family of Hussein Khalifeh has all their television sets and cell phones on 24 hours per day waiting for updates on the missing Air France jet. Khalifeh, who hails from the southern town of Qnarit, was on a business trip to Brazil with his partner Bassam Murr to buy cattle for their farm in Lebanon.
According to his family, Khalifeh used to make regular trips to Brazil.

Khalifeh, 34, is the father of three, the youngest of whom is a three-month-old infant.

"The news of the jet's disappearance came as a shock," Kamel Faroukh, Khalifeh's father-in-law told The Daily Star.

Farroukh added that Khalifeh was supposed to arrive in Beirut on Sunday, but the family never heard from him.

At least six Lebanese passengers were aboard a missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Lebanon's foreign ministry on Tuesday identified, in addition to Kahlifeh and Murr, three more people who disappeared on the same plane: Ahmad Fawzi, Sonia al-Muallem and Akram Koo.

LBC television, however, said a sixth passenger, Lora Youssef Rahhal, was among the missing Lebanese. It added that Rahhal is a Lebanese-born Swedish national