The French aviation safety watchdog Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) will analyse the black boxes of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft which crashed on Sunday near Addis Ababa, the agency said Wednesday.

"Ethiopian authorities have requested @BEA_Aero assistance for the analysis of FDR [flight data recorder] & CVR [cockpit voice recorder] / Any communication on the investigation progress is the responsibility of those authorities," BEA wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

Ethiopian Airlines previously refused to send the black boxes to the United States, where the Boeing 737 Max 8 was manufactured, The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday. US aviation authorities were among the latest to issue an emergency order to ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 series aircraft following the deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight.

READ MORE: FAA Finds Similarities in Ethiopia, Indonesia Boeing 737 MAX Crashes — Statement

Earlier this week, the US Federal Aviation Administration insisted that the planes were safe, despite growing concerns after the latest crash of the aircraft. However, on Wednesday, the FAA said in an emergency order that an investigation into two deadly air accidents involving Boeing 737 Max aircraft had discovered "some similarities," which led to a temporary grounding of the entire 737 Max fleet in the US.

Earlier in the day, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said that the black boxes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 would be sent to Germany for analysis. However, German authorities said they would not conduct the decoding.

On Sunday, a Boeing 737 Max 8, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing all 157 people from more than 30 countries on board.

READ MORE: India Bans Entry, Transit of Boeing 737 Max 8 from Its Airspace

The crash in Ethiopia was the second fatal incident involving the narrow-body aircraft in less than five months. In late October 2018, another Boeing 737 MAX 8, operated by Indonesia's Lion Air, plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, claiming the lives of 189 people. According to a preliminary investigation by Indonesia's airport authority, the plane's sensors were showing incorrect speed and altitude readings during another flight hours before the disaster.

In the wake of Sunday's crash in Ethiopia, aviation authorities and carriers around the world, including in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, France, Germany, South Africa, the European Union, China and Russia, have either grounded all 737 Max 8 series aircraft or closed their airspace to them.