There appeared to be no survivors among the 242 passengers and crew aboard an Air India plane that crashed near a major international airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, the city's police commissioner said Thursday.
Police in the Indian city of Ahmedabad said no survivors were expected after a London-bound passenger plane with 242 on board crashed Thursday, warning of more deaths where the jet smashed down.
“There appears to be no survivor in the crash,” city police commissioner GS Malik told AFP. “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.Police said they had collected 204 dead bodies.
“We have found 204 bodies,” Malik told AFP, adding that 41 injured people were “under treatment.”
The dead included those from the plane crash and from buildings into which the plane smashed. “Rescue work is ongoing,” he said.
An Air India plane bound for London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad, the airline and police said, and India’s federal health minister said that “many people” were killed. Police officers said it crashed in a civilian area near the airport.
India’s CNN News-18 TV channel 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. It showed a visual of a portion of the aircraft perched atop the building.
“The building on which it has crashed is a doctors’ hostel... we have cleared almost 70 to 80 percent of the area and will clear the rest soon,” a senior police officer told reporters.
Footage posted to social media shortly after the crash and verified by NBC News, shows plumes of thick black smoke rising into the sky from a civilian location to the south of the airport.
