An Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane with at least 242 people on board crashed in a densely populated residential area close to an airport on the edge of India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday morning.

Later on Thursday, the local police chief in Ahmedabad said at least 204 bodies had been recovered. Local rescue workers said they had retrieved between 30 and 35 bodies from a building hit by the aircraft, Reuters reported.

So far, no survivors have been reported.

Flight AI171 was headed to London Gatwick Airport on Thursday where it was due to land at 17:25 GMT.

“Of these [on board], 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British, 1 Canadian and 7 Portuguese,” Air India said in a statement.

The airline described the incident as “a tragic accident”.

“Many people” have died in the crash, the country’s health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda wrote in a post on X.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X: “The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.

“Have been in touch with ministers and authorities who are working to assist those affected.”

This incident is the latest in a series of serious and fatal events in the civil aviation industry this year, including a midair collision in Washington in January between a military helicopter and an aircraft.

The plane crashed in a residential area called Meghani Nagar, Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, head of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, told The Associated Press.

The city of 7-8 million people is in President Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Modi has directed the Ministry of Civil Aviation to take “all possible action” to assist at the crash site.

There is a large Gujarat population in Great Britain, and the Ahmedabad-London route is a popular one.

According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the plane’s final signal was received just seconds after takeoff at 1:38pm local time (08:08 GMT). It had reached an altitude of 625 feet (190 metres) before crashing back to the ground outside the airport, close to densely populated residential areas on the outskirts of the city.

The plane issued a mayday alert to air traffic control before all communications from the aircraft ceased.

Ahmedabad airport has been closed and all flight operations have been suspended until further notice.

Footage shared on social media of the crash site showed debris on fire, with huge plumes of thick, black smoke rising into the sky near the airport.

They also showed people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.

India’s CNN News-18 TV channels said the plane crashed on top of the dining area of state-run B.J. Medical College hostel, killing many medical students as well. It showed a visual of a portion of the aircraft perched atop the building.

“The building on which it has crashed is a doctors’ hostel…We have cleared almost 70 percent to 80 percent of the area and will clear the rest soon,” a senior police officer also told reporters.

Local journalist Sunil Vaidya told Al Jazeera: “The crash site is very close to a civil hospital where there is a medical college,” he said. “It is quite possible that students studying there are staying in a hostel nearby.”

This could be a very serious crash, experts say. Alex Macheras, an independent aviation analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Boeing 787 is a long-haul craft, which means it has capacity for a large number of passengers.

“This is probably going to be one of the worst aviation incidents for Indian aviation history in recent decades,” Macheras said.

However, he added that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, of which there are 1,100 in operation around the world, has a very good track record for safety.