India police said Saturday, June 14, that 279 bodies had been recovered from the site where a passenger plane crashed into a residential district of the city of Ahmedabad.
The revised toll, which came from a senior officer who requested anonymity to speak to the media, raised the earlier figure of 265, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in the 21st century.
Air India said 242 people were on board the flight bound for London’s Gatwick airport, with only one of them surviving.
At least 38 people were killed on the ground, where the plane crashed into a residential area near the airport. However, the official casualty number will not be finalised until the slow process of DNA identification is completed.
Onboard the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were 169 Indian passengers, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian, as well as 12 crew members.
The plane, moments before it crashed around lunchtime on Thursday, June 12, issued a mayday call after lifting barely 100 metres (330 feet) from the ground.
On Friday, June 13, investigators recovered a black box recorder from the crash site, with forensic teams still looking for the second.
