P K Mishra visits Air India plane crash site

Ahmedabad: P K Mishra, the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Sunday inspected the Air India plane crash site in Ahmedabad and also visited the civil hospital where injured persons are undergoing treatment.

State government officers apprised Mishra about the sequence of events culminating into the worst aviation disaster in decades that left 241 of 242 people on board the ill-fated AI Dreamliner dead on Thursday.

After enquiring about the health of the injured persons, Mishra went to the morgue area of the hospital.

"I am very pained by the enormity of the tragedy. Everybody is sad. It is our duty to share grief and express our feelings for the victims," Mishra told reporters.

All but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 787-8(AI 171) and another 29 persons, including five MBBS students, on the ground were killed when the London-bound aircraft crashed into the nearby campus of the medical college in Meghaninagar area and burst into flames, moments after it took off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport.

Authorities have so far established the identities of 47 victims by matching their DNA samples with their kin, and handed 24 bodies to their families, officials said on Sunday.