Indian Airlines Plane Crashes with 58 On BoardAn Indian Airlines (IA) Boeing 737 plane crashed on a residential area near Patna airport in eastern India on Monday with 58 passengers and crew on board, an IA official said.``There are some survivors who have been taken to hospital," the official aid, adding that he had no confirmation of the precise death toll. The airline said the plane was carrying 52 passengers and six crew members, and eyewitnesses said there had also been casualties on the ground. The jet, belonging to Indian Airlines subsidiary Alliance Air, was coming in to land when it crashed two kilometers (1.2 miles) short of the main airport in Patna, the capital of Bihar state, at around 7:15 a.m. (0145 GMT). "The weather conditions were fine. It is too early to speculate on what went wrong," the offical said. Some eyewitnesses said an engine appeared to have caught fire. The plane, flying from Calcutta to New Delhi on a route that included planned stopovers at Patna and then Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh state, crashed into a thickly populated housing colony just southeast of the airport. Local residents told an AFP reporter at the scene the plane had crashed on a single-story house, killing all six people inside. "I saw the plane coming down on the house," said eyewitness Ashok Kesri. "The moment it touched the roof there was a huge bang and then it burst into flames." Firemen were dousing flames as they searched for survivors amid the wreckage of the plane and the rubble of demolished houses. "There is an army barracks nearby and we have requested their help," said one fire official. Charred bodies and airplane seats were strewn over a wide area. One of the rescuers said 12 people had been taken to hospital, although it was unclear if they were passengers or casualties on the ground. |
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