Ahmedabad

India is set to host the centenary Commonwealth Games in 2030 – the second time in 20 years that the event will have been held in the world’s most populous nation.

The city of Ahmedabad in the west of the country has been chosen ahead of Abuja in Nigeria by an evaluation commission from governing body Commonwealth Sport.

And the decision to hold the Games there in five years time is now expected to be ratified at the organisation’s general assembly in Glasgow on 26 November.

Ahmedabad can boast the Narendra Modi Stadium – the largest in the world, with a capacity of 132,000 – which hosted the Cricket World Cup final in 2023.

The city has a population in excess of five million people, and has even been suggested as a potential bidder to host a future Olympic Games.

“We see the 2030 Games as a powerful opportunity to inspire our youth, strengthen international partnerships and contribute to a shared future across the Commonwealth,” said Dr. P T Usha, president of Commonwealth Games Association India.

The Games first visited India in 2010 when Delhi hosted.

It is the second time Abuja has missed out on staging the Commonwealths, having been overlooked for the 2014 edition in favour of Glasgow.

And it also means Africa’s wait to hold the event for a first time will continue.

The news looks set to end fears that Glasgow 2026 might be the last-ever Games, with Scotland’s largest city having stepped in after the Australian state of Victoria withdrew for financial reasons.

That came after Birmingham took on the 2022 event after the South African city of Durban pulled out.

However, a reimagined format – with fewer sports, athletes and venues – has lessened the cost and enticed India, Nigeria and a handful of other countries to make their pitch to welcome the 74 Commonwealth Sport nations and territories.

A Commonwealth Sport statement said they “assessed candidate cities against a wide range of criteria including technical delivery, athlete experience, infrastructure, governance, and alignment with Commonwealth Sport values”.

It added: “The Commonwealth Sport Executive Board has agreed to develop a strategy for supporting and accelerating Nigeria’s hosting ambitions for future Games, including consideration for 2034.”

The 2030 Games will mark the centenary of the inaugural event held in Hamilton, Canada, in 1930.

Most bodies are charred or mutilated, and the local authorities are working to identify them by matching DNA samples.

At least 270 bodies have been recovered after a London-bound Air India plane crashed in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, as a rescue team continues to search the site of India’s worst aviation disaster in three decades.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, with 242 people on board and 125,000 litres of fuel, lost altitude seconds after takeoff on Thursday and crashed into a residential area, killing all but one on board and at least two dozen others on the ground.

Dhaval Gameti, a doctor at Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, told The Associated Press news agency on Saturday that they have received 270 bodies so far.

Most bodies were charred or mutilated, and the local authorities are working to identify them by matching DNA samples as their relatives waited to perform their last rites. Authorities said it normally takes up to 72 hours to complete DNA matching.

Nearly 10 bodies – not of the passengers – found at the crash site have been returned to their families after identification, a local official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Of the 242 passengers and crew on board the Air India plane, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were British, seven were Portuguese, and one was Canadian.

The lone survivor, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, is under observation at the Civil Hospital for his impact wounds. Gameti said he was “doing very well and will be ready to be discharged any time soon”.

India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, said the flight’s digital data recorder, or the black box, was recovered from a rooftop near the crash site by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the investigation into the crash. He said the government will look into all possible theories of what could have caused the crash.

The AAIB said it was working with “full force” to extract the data, which is expected to reveal information about the engine and control settings. Meanwhile, forensic teams are still looking for a second black box.

Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator for both the US National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration, told the AP the investigators should be able to answer some important questions about what caused the crash as soon as next week as long as the flight data recorder is in good shape.

Guzzetti said the investigators are likely looking into whether wing flaps were set correctly, the engine lost power, alarms were going off inside the cockpit, and if the plane’s crew correctly logged information about the hot temperature outside, and the weight of the fuel and passengers. Mistakes in the data could result in the wing flaps being set incorrectly, he added.

There are currently about 1,200 of the 787 Dreamliner aircraft worldwide, and this was the first deadly crash in 16 years of operation, according to experts. The United States planemaker Boeing, whose planes have been plagued by safety issues on other types of aircraft, said it was in touch with Air India and stood “ready to support them” over the incident.

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

Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff on Thursday, and an adjacent multistorey building.

The airline said the Gatwick Airport-bound flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Of those, Air India said, there were 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.

Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, told The Associated Press news agency that Air India Flight 171 crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38pm (08:08 GMT). He said 244 people were on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy with Air India’s numbers.

All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X.

The 787 Dreamliner is a wide-body, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of the aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

Boeing said it was aware of the reports of the crash and was “working to gather more information”.

The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020 when an Air India Express Boeing 737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people.

The deadliest air disaster in India was on November 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhstan Airlines flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 people on board the two planes.

AP

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