An aircraft
crashed at 19:40 local time (14:10 GMT) on Friday, as it attempted to land for
a second time at Calicut International Airport. The first attempt was aborted
by the pilots because of the heavy monsoon-season rainfall lashing Kerala.
Air India
Express plane with 190 people on board has crashed at an airport in the
southern state of Kerala, killing at least 17 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".
The rescue operation at the
crash site has now been completed and survivors have been taken to hospitals in
Calicut and Malappuram, according to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Dozens of people were
injured, 15 of them seriously, a senior police officer said.
Air India Express said the
two pilots were among the dead.
India's Civil Aviation
Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, tweeted that 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).
The director general of
India's National Disaster Response Force, S N Pradhan, said Calicut airport had
a "table-top runway" and that the aircraft fell into "a
ditch" after skidding across it.
He said the impact with the
bottom of the ditch caused the fuselage to break in two, and that the front
half was "very badly mangled and damaged".
Mr Puri told broadcaster DD
News that first responders were able to rescue the passengers because the plane
did not catch fire. Several people had to be cut free.
At the time of the plane's
descent, Kerala was being battered by heavy rains, which are usual in India at
this time of year, due to the seasonal monsoon.
Earlier on Friday, dozens
of people were feared dead in Kerala's Idukki district after monsoon-season
floods triggered a landslide.
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