An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed Thursday in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Local police say they have found one surviving passenger.
“Yes, one survivor is confirmed,” said Dhananjay Dwivedi, principal secretary of Gujarat state’s health department. They were being treated in hospital, he added without further details.
Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane went down in a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.
Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Many charred bodies lay on the ground and one was carried away on a stretcher by first responders.
“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.
Indian television news channels reported the plane crashed on top of the dining area of a medical college hostel. It was unclear if any medical students were present inside the building at the time of the crash.
The tail cone of the plane with damaged stabilizer fins still attached was lodged near the top of one building.
“As the plane has fallen in a residential area which also had offices, some locals would have also died,” Police Commissioner G.S. Malik added told The Associated Press. “Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained.”
Modi called the crash “heartbreaking beyond words.”
“In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected,” he said in a social media post.
Credit:FRANCE24