Thick black plumes of acrid smoke towered high above India’s Ahmedabad airport yesterday after a London-bound passenger jet with 242 people aboard crashed shortly after takeoff.
Several videos posted on social media, which The Associated Press was not able to immediately verify, showed an aircraft rapidly losing altitude — with its nose up — before it hit a building and exploded into an orange ball of fire.
A reporter in the city said that the plane crashed in an area between a hospital and the city’s Ghoda Camp neighborhood.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Police said that no survivors were expected and more bodies might be found of people on the ground when the jet crashed.
“There appears to be no survivor in the crash,” city police commissioner G.S. Malik told reporters. “And since the airplane has fallen on an area which was residential and had some offices, there are more casualties as well.”
He did not give further details of those killed on the ground.
The Indian Express reported that all 242 on board had died, citing the police.
Authorities said that the plane went down outside the airport perimeter, in a crowded residential area, which local media said included a hostel where medical students and young doctors live.
“When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and firefighters were dousing the flames,” Poonam Patni told reporters. “Many of the bodies were burned.”
Another resident, who declined to be named, said: “We saw people from the building jumping from the second and third floor to save themselves. The plane was in flames.”
“We helped people get out of the building and sent the injured to the hospital,” they added.
Air India’s Flight 171 — a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London’s Gatwick Airport — crashed shortly after takeoff at about 1:40pm, officials said.
The passengers were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian. Two pilots and 10 cabin crew were also aboard.
At the crash site, firefighters could be seen trying to control flames on the burning plane debris that also charred trees.
Photographs released by India’s Central Industrial Security Force, a paramilitary police force, showed a large chunk of the plane that had smashed through the brick and concrete wall of a building.
“I was at home when we heard a massive sound,” one Ahmedabad resident told Press Trust of India. “When we went out to see what had happened, there was a layer of thick smoke in the air. When we came here, dead bodies and debris from the crashed aircraft were scattered all over.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
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