An Indian jetliner trying to land during a torrential downpour in southern India on Friday night skidded off a slick runway, crashed into a wall, tumbled into a valley and split in half, killing at least 17 people and injuring scores.
The Air India Express Boeing 737 was a special repatriation flight carrying more than 180 passengers from Dubai to Kozhikode, a city along India’s southwestern coast in Kerala State. Many aboard were Indians who had been stranded in the Persian Gulf during the coronavirus pandemic and had been waiting for months to return home.
Indian media showed injured passengers lying on their backs in the hallways of a hospital, transported there by emergency workers in a drenching rain. According to news reports, as many as 120 people had been injured.