Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're live from London. My name's Paul Henley.

In the city of Ahmedabad in the northwest of India, a plane has crashed in a residential area just after takeoff with 244 people on board.

It was an Air India flight bound for London.

There are not thought to be any survivors.

The airline's chairman has described the incident as a tragic accident

and said emergency response teams were still at the site.

Let's talk live now to Anbarasan Etirajan,

the BBC's South Asia regional editor.

And Barisand, can you describe first what happened?

The plane carrying more than 240 passengers bound for Gatwick Airport in London.

It took off around 139 local time, in India time. It was supposed to land around 1825 in

Catwick. And this plane list, the passenger list included many Indians and British and also

from other nationalities. Now, videos on social media show the moment the plane takes off within a few seconds, it was a clear

daylight and the plane was slowly sinking down. And then what we saw on the video was a huge

ball of fire followed by black smoke, plumes of smoke, and hit a residential area.

And what we understand is one of the buildings it hit was a doctor's hostel, a medical

student's hostel in that Meghani Nagar area.

So the officials initially were trying to rescue people and find out what really happened.

And now, the police chief in Ahmedabad says, according to the local media,

they have recovered more than 200 bodies from the crash site,

and more than 40 people have been admitted to various hospitals with severe burn injuries.

And according to the local media,

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