At least 18 people have died and several injured after a plane crashed in India on Saturday.
According to officials, the plane which had 190 people on board, crash-landed and tore in two at an airport in southern India, after fierce rain and winds lashed it, The Punch reports.
According to first accounts, this development occurred when the Air India Express Boeing 737, on a special flight from Dubai, to bring back Indians stranded overseas by the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway at Kozhikode in Kerala state late Friday, plunged down an embankment and broke up.
While making commenting, one senior emergency official at the scene revealed one of the reasons for the crash. He said,
“Fuel had leaked out so it was a miracle that the plane did not catch fire, the toll could have been much higher,”.
Passenger Renjith Panangad, 34, recalled the plane touching the ground and then everything went “blank”.
“After the crash, the emergency door opened and I dragged myself out somehow,” he told AFP from a hospital bed in Kozhikode.
“The front part of the plane was gone — it was completely gone. I don’t know how I made it but I’m grateful. I am still shaken.”
