An Air India Express plane with 191 people on board has crashed at an airport in the southern state of Kerala, killing at least 16 people, officials say.
The Boeing 737, en route from Dubai, skidded off the runway in rain and broke in two after landing at Calicut airport, aviation officials said.
The flight was repatriating Indians stranded by the coronavirus crisis.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “pained by the plane accident”.
MK Raghavan, a lawmaker from Calicut, told the BBC at least 16 people died in the crash.
Most people on board the Boeing 737 jet have been evacuated, with dozens of them taken to hospital with injuries, some serious, authorities said.
“We have at least 89 people, many of them with serious injuries, admitted at different Kozhikode hospitals. The ambulances are still coming in,” a senior police official, Sujith Das, told AFP news agency.
The airline said there were 184 passengers, including 10 children, and seven crew members on board flight IX-1344 when it crashed in rainy conditions at Calicut, also known as Kozhikode.
What do we know about the crash?
The plane attempted to land just before 20:00 local time (15:30 BST) on Friday, as heavy monsoon-season rainfall lashed Kerala.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the plane fell into a valley and broke in two after skidding off the end of the runway. No fire was reported at the time of landing, the aviation regulator said.
In a tweet India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, said the aircraft “overshot the runway in rainy conditions”, then plunged down a 35ft (10.6m) slope, before breaking in two.
He said a formal inquiry would be carried out by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).
BBC
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