'Bodies everywhere': Rescuers, lone survivor describe horror of India plane crash site

France 24

18 hours ago

Volunteers who rushed to help after a passenger jet crashed into a residential neighbourhood of India 's Ahmedabad city described Friday the intense fireball they faced – and the challenge ahead to identify the bodies of at least 265 victims.
Bharat Solanki, 51, was working at a fuel station when the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – carrying 242 passengers and crew – took off from nearby Ahmedabad airport around lunchtime on Thursday.
Less than a minute later it ploughed into a residential area, bursting into searing flames with what residents described as an ear-splitting blast.
All but one aboard the plane was killed, and at least 24 others died on the ground.
Solanki and a couple of friends rushed to the site.
"We saw bodies everywhere – they were in pieces, fully burnt," he said, recalling the horror of the scene.
"We took out dead bodies", he said, adding that he also helped bring out those injured from the medical hostel and nearby buildings that the plane smashed into.
"Everywhere just bodies, parts, body parts. The bodies were totally burnt. It was like coal."
'About to die'
The lone survivor aboard the London-bound passenger plane said Friday how even he was struggling to explain how he miraculously walked out alive from the fireball explosion.
"Everything happened in front of me, and even I couldn't believe how I managed to come out alive from that," British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh said from his hospital bed on Friday, speaking in Hindi to national broadcaster DD News.
Ramesh, 40, is from the British city of Leicester, according to Britain's Press Association news agency, which spoke with his family at home.
The plane smashed into the buildings just outside the perimeter of the airport.
"Initially, I too thought that I was about to die, but then I opened my eyes and realised that I was still alive," he said.
"I saw the air hostess and aunties and uncles all in front of me," he said, his voice trailing off in emotion, using a term of respect used in India for older people.
"I unfastened my seatbelt and tried to escape, and I did," he said.
"I think the side I was on was not facing the hostel," he added. "Where I landed was closer to the ground and there was space too – and when my door broke – I saw that there was space, and I thought I could try to slip out."
Videos shared on social media showed Ramesh soon after, dressed in a bloodied t-shirt and limping, but walking towards an ambulance.
"My left hand got slightly burnt due to the fire, but an ambulance brought me to the hospital," he said. "The people here are taking good care of me."
'Didn't get a chance'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited the crash site on Friday morning, called it a "scene of devastation".
He was seen peering up at a fire-blackened multi-storey building with the plane's wheels and tail embedded in a wall.
Authorities have set up DNA testing for relatives of passengers and those killed on the ground to identify the scorched bodies and body parts.
It may be weeks before a final death toll is confirmed.
Home Minister Amit Shah, speaking after visiting the crash site on Thursday, said the plane was carrying 125,000 litres of fuel.
The "temperature was so high that one didn't get a chance", he said.
Air India 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.
Sona Prakash, who was close to the residential blocks of the medical accommodation, described how the "hostel was destroyed", adding that "so many doctors were injured, so many died".
Another witness, 35-year-old labourer Patani, who uses only one name, said those around him thought a bomb had gone off before they realised it was a plane crash.
"There was black smoke everywhere, plumes of smoke", added Vinod Bhai, another labourer.
"The sky was only black, that's how much smoke was there."