Rescue teams with sniffer dogs combed the crash site Friday of a London-bound passenger jet which ploughed into a residential area of India’s Ahmedabad city, killing at least 265 people on board and on the ground. One man aboard the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, carrying 242 passengers and crew, miraculously survived Thursday´s fiery crash, which left the tailpiece of the aircraft jutting out of the second floor of a hostel for medical staff from a nearby hospital.
The nose and front wheel landed on a canteen building where students were having lunch, witnesses said. Deputy Commissioner of Police Kanan Desai said that 265 bodies had so far been counted, suggesting at least 24 people died on the ground, but the toll may rise as more bodies and body parts are recovered.
“The official number of deceased will be declared only after DNA testing is completed”, Home Minister Amit Shah said in a statement late Thursday, adding that “families whose relatives are abroad have already been informed, and their DNA samples will be taken”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the crash of Air India flight 171 as “heartbreaking beyond words”. The airline said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian on board the flight bound for London´s Gatwick airport, as well as 12 crew members. Air India said the sole survivor from the plane, a British national of Indian origin who local media named as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was being treated in hospital.
“He said, ‘I have no idea how I exited the plane'”, his brother Nayan Kumar Ramesh, 27, told Britain’s Press Association in Leicester. In Ahmedabad, disconsolate relatives of passengers gathered Friday at an emergency centre to give DNA samples so their loved ones could be identified. Ashfaque Nanabawa, 40, said he had come to find his cousin Akeel Nanabawa, who had been aboard with his wife and three-year-old daughter. They had spoken as his cousin sat in the plane, just before takeoff. “He called us and he said: ‘I am in the plane and I have boarded safely and everything was okay’. That was his last call.”
