An Air In­dia pas­sen­ger plane bound for Lon­don with more than 240 peo­ple on board crashed Thurs­day in In­dia’s north­west­ern city of Ahmed­abad, the air­line said.

Vi­su­als on lo­cal tele­vi­sion chan­nels showed smoke bil­low­ing from the crash site in what ap­peared to be a pop­u­lat­ed area near the air­port in Ahmed­abad, a city with a pop­u­la­tion of more than 5 mil­lion and the cap­i­tal of Gu­jarat, Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di’s home state.

Fire­fight­ers doused the smok­ing wreck­age of the plane, which would have been ful­ly loaded with fu­el short­ly af­ter take­off, and ad­ja­cent mul­ti-sto­ry build­ings with wa­ter. Charred bod­ies lay on the ground.