AHMEDABAD, India, June  12, 2025 (bss/AFP) - Thick black plumes of acrid
smoke towered high above India's Ahmedabad airport Thursday after a
London-bound passenger jet with 242 people aboard crashed shortly after takeoff.

 While officials initially said everyone aboard was feared dead, state
health official Dhananjay Dwivedi told AFP later that one passenger had
survived after the plane smashed into a residential area.

 Several videos posted on social media, which AFP 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.

  Authorities said it went down outside the airport perimeter, in a crowded
residential area, while an AFP reporter in the city said the plane crashed
between a hospital and the city's Ghoda Camp neighbourhood.

 A medic described how the burning plane had smashed into a residential
block that is home to medical students and young doctors.

 "One half of the plane crashed into the residential building where doctors
lived with their families," said Krishna, a doctor who gave only one name,
adding he saw "about 15-20 burnt bodies" in the wreckage and debris.

 It was not clear whether the dead he had seen had been killed on board the
plane, or had been in the building the aircraft ploughed into.
       
       - Bodies burned -
       
 "The nose and front wheel landed on the canteen building where students
were having lunch," he said, adding he and colleagues had "rescued some 15
students from the building and sent them to hospital".

"When we reached the spot there were several bodies lying around and
firefighters were dousing the flames," resident Poonam Patni told AFP.

 "Many of the bodies were burned", she added.

 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."

 Air India's flight 171 -- a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London's
Gatwick Airport -- crashed shortly after takeoff around 1:40 pm (0810 GMT),
officials said.

 The passengers included 169 Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese,
and a Canadian. Two pilots and 10 cabin crew were also aboard.

 Rescue teams supported by the military had recovered 204 bodies, city
police commissioner GS Malik told AFP, with people aboard the plane and those
on the ground among the dead.

 Some 41 people were being treated at local hospitals.
       
       - 'Massive sound' -
       
 At the crash site, firefighters could be seen trying to control flames on
the burning plane debris that also charred trees.

 One video, from social media but posted by the Press Trust of India (PTI)
news agency, showed what appeared to be a chunk of fuselage -- larger than a
car -- that had smashed onto the roof of a multi-storey building.

 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
PTI.

  "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."

 Outside Ahmedabad airport, a woman wailing inconsolably in grief said that
five of her relatives had been aboard the plane.