Dead bodies mangled luggage debris haunt rescuers at Air India crash site

AHMEDABAD - Students of the B.J. Medical College were having lunch in their hostel dining hall on June 12 when a Boeing 787 jet loaded with fuel smashed into the building and exploded.

Flight AI171 had taken off just minutes earlier from a nearby airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, before making a perilous descent that ended in the death of all but one of the 242 people aboard. The number of casualties among those on the ground and the building the plane slammed into is less clear.

Those that rushed to the site in the wake of the crash were met with haunting visuals: a charred plane wing lay strewn across a road. Fragments of another wing and engine parts were nearby, along with clothes and mangled bags. A pungent smell of burnt debris lingered in the air.

“The blast was so intense that no one could approach the site initially,” said Mr Rajesh Patel, a 56-year-old real estate businessman. He was heading home for lunch on June 12 afternoon, but instead spent the next seven hours helping pull out bodies from the wreckage along with rescue workers. “The scene was horrific, with bodies scattered everywhere.”

About 150 to 200 people, including students and workers, were inside the medical college hostel building when disaster struck, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

“We collected the remains in bags and clothing, and later used sarees and sacks,” Mr Patel said. “The rescue operation continued until 9 p.m., during which I personally collected around 50 bodies.”

The official death toll will be announced only after DNA verification, according to Mr Amit Shah, India’s federal home minister.

Investigators are combing the wreckage to determine what caused the Boeing Co. Dreamliner to crash. One of the two black boxes from the plane have