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An Air India aircraft bound for London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday.
More than 100 people were said to have been killed in what was described as one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
According to a Reuters report quoting Air India, the plane was headed for Gatwick Airport, south of the British capital.
Police officers said it crashed in a residential area near the airport. More than 100 bodies, most of them badly charred, had been brought to the local government hospital for autopsy, police said.
“The building on which it has crashed is a doctors’ hostel… we have cleared almost 70% to 80% of the area and will clear the rest soon,” a senior police officer told reporters.
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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.
India’s CNN News-18 TV channels said the plane crashed on top of the dining area of the state-run B.J. Medical College hostel, killing many medical students as well.
The passengers included 217 adults, 11 children and two infants, a source told Reuters. Of them, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian, Air India said.
Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.
It was the first crash for the Dreamliner, which began flying commercially in 2011, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. The plane that crashed on Thursday flew for the first time in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in January 2014, Flightradar24 said.
“At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates,” Air India said on X. “The injured are being taken to the nearest hospitals.”
