A London-bound passenger jet crashed in a residential area in the Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing at least 290 people on board and on the ground, but one passenger is believed to have survived.

An AFP journalist saw bodies being recovered from the crash site, and the back of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which had 242 passengers and crew on board, hanging over the edge of a building it hit around lunchtime.

The government opened a formal investigation into the cause of the crash, and rescue teams worked overnight scouring the charred wreckage with sniffer dogs.

“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after Air India’s flight 171 crashed following takeoff. “It is heartbreaking beyond words”.

Police commissioner Vidhi Chaudhary said the number killed stood at 290 people, suggesting that at least 19 people died when the jet ploughed into a medical staff hostel in a blazing fireball.

But while everyone aboard the flight was initially feared killed, state health official Dhananjay Dwivedi told AFP “one survivor is confirmed” and had been hospitalised.

The AFP journalist saw a building ablaze after the crash, with thick black smoke billowing into the air, and a section of the plane on the ground.

“One half of the plane crashed into the residential building where doctors lived with their families,” said Krishna, a doctor who did not give his full name.

“The nose and front wheel landed on the canteen building where students were having lunch,” he said.

Krishna said he saw “about 15 to 20 burnt bodies”, while he and his colleagues rescued around 15 students.

India’s civil aviation authority said there were 242 people aboard, including two pilots and 10 cabin crew.

Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese, and a Canadian on board the flight bound for London’s Gatwick airport.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the scenes from the crash were “devastating”, while the country’s King Charles III said he was “desperately shocked”.

But one of the British passengers was reported to have walked out alive — with India’s Home Minister Amit Shah telling reporters he had heard the “good news of the survivor” and was speaking to them “after meeting him”.

The BBC and Britain’s Press Association news agency spoke to family members of the reported survivor, 40-year-old Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.

“He said, I have no idea how I exited the plane”, his brother Nayan Kumar Ramesh, 27, told PA in the British city of Leicester.