Jolie flies out of Ethiopia with adopted girl

Angelina Jolie and her Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Brad Pitt have picked up the orphaned baby girl the actress has adopted and flown out of Ethiopia on a private jet, an official said.

Jolie’s adopted son from Cambodia, three-year-old Maddox, was also with her in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said Tesfeye Berhu, the manager of the Wide Horizons adoption agency, which arranged the adoption.

He said the adoption process was complete and the group flew out of Addis Ababa late last night.

Jolie has named the five-month-old girl Zahara. The baby has been tested for HIV and turned out negative, he said.

Berhu said the exact cause of death of Zahara’s parents was not clear, but he suspected they died of Aids, which has killed more than 900,000 people in Ethiopia.

“It is our suspicion because obviously both her parents are dead,” he said.

Jolie and Pitt arrived in Ethiopia on Wednesday but declined to speak about the adoption.

The twice-divorced Jolie has often talked of adopting a second child.

Ethiopia, a country of 70 million, has more than five million orphans, their parents lost to famine, disease, war and Aids – a catastrophe the government has said is “tearing apart the social fabric” of the east African nation.