More than 200 people were killed when an Air India plane bound for London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, authorities said, in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The plane came down in a residential area, crashing on to a medical college hostel outside the airport during lunch hour. It was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital.
City police chief G S Malik said that 204 bodies had been recovered from the crash site. There were no reports of survivors being found, and the Indian Express newspaper said all 242 on board had perished, citing police.
Malik said the bodies recovered could include both passengers and people killed on the ground. Relatives had been asked to give DNA samples to identify the dead, state health secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi said.
“The building on which it has crashed is a doctors’ hostel... we have cleared almost 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the area and will clear the rest soon,” a senior police officer told reporters.
Parts of the plane’s body were scattered around the building into which it crashed, photographs and videos from the area showed. The tail of the plane was stuck on top of the building. The passengers included 217 adults, 11 children and two infants, a source said. Of them, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian, Air India said.
CRASH JUST AFTER TAKE-OFF
The crash occurred just after the plane took off, television channels reported. One channel showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge jet of fire can be seen rising into the sky from beyond the houses. Visuals also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke rising up into the sky near the airport. They also showed people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances. “My sister-in-law was going to London. Within an hour, I got news that the plane had crashed,” Poonam Patel, a relative of one of the passengers, said.
Ramila, the mother of a student at the medical college, said her son had gone to the hostel for his lunch break when the plane crashed. “My son is safe, and I have spoken to him. He jumped from the second floor, so he suffered some injuries,” she said.
According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad Airport, the aircraft departed at 1:39 pm (0809 GMT) from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no response from the aircraft.
Britain was working with Indian authorities to urgently establish the facts around the crash and to provide support to those involved, the country’s foreign office said in a statement posted on its website.
“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. “It is heartbreaking beyond words.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said images emerging of the crash were “devastating”, and that he was being kept informed as the situation developed. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said King Charles was also being kept updated. — Reuters
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