After months of waiting, the remains of Kenyans who perished in the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash in March arrived in Nairobi on Monday.

Specialised caskets bearing the remains of 28 victims arrived aboard an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport moments before 10am on Monday.

The families and friends of the crash victims gathered at the airport, where the received psychosocial support before the remains of their kin landed.

Authorities said the remains would only be released to close family members.

Following the arrival of the remains of the crash victims, their families will finally be able to inter them, seven months after the tragic crash

According to Ethiopian authorities, the bodies were severely damaged in the crash, and only after extensive DNA tests were the remains matched to corresponding families.

The DNA matching took more than 240 days to conclude

The high number of crash victims and the intensity of the damage to the bodies complicated the exercise.

Days after the accident, some families were handed jars of ashes and earth from the crash site to serve as memory of their loved ones. But most of them said they would only get full closure when they got the remains of their kin.