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A passenger plane carrying 191 people on board has crash landed at an airport in southern India and several passengers are injured, Indian media and an airline spokesman have said.
The Air India plane was coming in from Dubai on Friday when it overshot the runway as it landed in the southern city of Calicut, in the state of Kerala.
The plane’s fuselage split into two as it fell into a valley 30 feet below, authorities said.
Pic from Karipur airport. It was Air India Express plane pic.twitter.com/PhNNtg2roM
— Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) August 7, 2020
“As per the initial reports rescue operations are on and passengers are being taken to hospital for medical care,” the civil aviation ministry said in the statement. There was no fire on board, it said.
Rajiv Jain, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Ministry, said there were 174 adult passengers, 10 infants, two pilots and five cabin crew on board the aircraft.
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said in a tweet that he was “distressed to learn about the tragic accident of Air India Express aircraft at Kozhikode.”
It was a repatriation flight operated by the government to bring Indians home during international travel restrictions due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
More to follow …
