��������

NEW DELHI: The death toll from the crash of an Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London has risen to 270, as bodies, including those of people killed on the ground, continue to be identified.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed less than a minute after takeoff from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Gujarat state on Thursday.

It was carrying 242 people — 230 passengers, two pilots and 10 crew members. Only one person, a British national sitting in an emergency exit seat, survived the crash.

It remains unclear how many people were killed on the ground as the aircraft fell on B.J. Medical College and a hostel for students and resident doctors of the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.

Dr. Dhaval Gameti, president of the Junior Doctors’ Association at the college, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the hospital had received the bodies of 270 victims.

The process of matching DNA samples to confirm their identities is underway.

Dr. Rajnish Patel, additional superintendent at the hospital, told the media on Sunday that only 14 bodies had been handed over to their next of kin.

“In the Ahmedabad plane tragedy, the DNA samples of 32 deceased individuals have been matched,” the hospital said in a statement.

“The mortal remains of the deceased whose DNA samples have been matched are being respectfully handed over to their families.”

Dr. Sarbari Dutta, secretary general of the Indian Medical Association, told Arab News that at least four medical students were confirmed to have been killed when the plane crashed into the college compound.

“More than 20 students are admitted in the hospital, some of them with very severe injuries,” she said, adding that the actual number of casualties would “definitely” be higher.

India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is leading the inquiry into the cause of the crash.

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said on Saturday, after the aircraft’s digital flight data recorder, or black box, had been found at the site of the crash, that an investigation report would be issued within three months.

“The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has also given an order to do extended surveillance for the (Boeing) 787 planes,” he said.

“There are 34 in our Indian aircraft fleet today. I believe that eight have already been inspected and with immediate urgency. All of them are going to be done.”

STETS’KIVKA: Despite the driving rain, a few elderly residents wander into the streets of Stetskivka in northeast Ukraine to catch a yellow bus to go shopping in nearby Sumy, the regional capital.
They are worried about the Russian drones that have been striking the area with increasing regularity, more than three years into Moscow’s invasion.
“I’m afraid. Nobody knows what could happen to the bus we take,” Galyna Golovko, 69, told AFP at the small shop she runs near the bus stop.
Golovko said she never goes out in the morning or evening when Russian drones criss-cross the sky.
“It’s scary how many drones fly in the morning.... In the morning and in the evening it’s just hell,” she said.
The border with the neighboring Russian region of Kursk is just 17 kilometers (11 miles) away.
The Sumy region was the starting point for a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk last year.
Ukraine held swathes of the territory for eight months, until a spring offensive by Russian forces supported by North Korean troops pushed them back.
Moscow has since advanced toward the city of Sumy, taking several villages along the way and forcing mandatory evacuations of civilian residents.
At the Stetskivka bus stop, an elderly woman said she had packed up in case Russian troops arrive in town, where Ukrainian soldiers have replaced a pre-war population of 5,500 people.
The town is just 10 kilometers from the front line, and residents said there is heavy fighting nearby.
Beyond Stetskivka, “everything has been destroyed, there is not a single village,” Golovko said.
On her shop counter, there was a plastic box with a few banknotes — donations for a local family that lost its home, destroyed by a Russian glide bomb.


Ten kilometers to the south lies Sumy, a city that had 255,000 inhabitants before the war.
So far, restaurants are crowded and there seems little concern about the Russian advance.
But buildings in the city bear the scars of Russian bombardments.
And, when the sounds of car horns go down in the evenings, explosions can be heard in the distance.
The streets are lined with concrete bunkers against the increasingly frequent strikes from Russia, which has said it wants to set up a “buffer zone” to prevent future Ukrainian incursions.
“The enemy is trying to advance,” said Anvar, commander of the drone battalion of the 225th regiment, which is leading the defense of the region.
“We are pushing them back. Sometimes we advance, sometimes they do,” he told AFP in an apartment that serves as a base for his unit.
“We still have troops in the Kursk region. Nobody has tried to drive them out,” he said, calling the conflict in the region a “war of positions.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the Russian offensive in Sumy had been stopped, just a day after Russian forces said they had captured another village in the region.


Sitting next to Anvar, one of his men soldered microprocessors in silence, except for electronic clicking that made the room feel like a laboratory.
Surrounded by 3D printers and piles of batteries, the members of the brigade are busy transforming Chinese drones into flying weapons.
“It is now a drone war,” the commander said.
Anvar said that Russia was continually sending “cannon fodder” along this part of the front to try and overwhelm Ukrainian troops.
“I know people who have gone mad because of the number of people they manage to kill in a day.”
Russian soldiers “continue marching calmly” amid the bodies of their fallen comrades, he said.
In Stetskivka, Golovko voiced confidence that Ukrainian soldiers would hold the line and said she was “not going anywhere.”
“I will stay at home,” she said tearfully, beating the counter with her fist.
“I have traveled to Russia. We have friends there, and relatives. Everything was fine before.
“One day, this madness will end. The madness that Putin unleashed will end,” she said in a shaky voice.
fv/dt/jhb