NEW DELHI, June 12 (Reuters) - An Air India plane headed

to London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking

off from India's western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, the

airline and police said, without specifying whether there were

any fatalities.

The plane was headed to Gatwick airport in the UK, Air India

said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area

near the airport.

Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a

Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger

aircraft in service.

"At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will

share further updates," Air India said on X.

The crash occurred when the aircraft was taking off,

television channels reported. One channel showed the plane

taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from

the screen before a huge cloud of fire rising into the sky from

beyond the houses.

Visuals also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke

rising up into the sky near the airport.

They also showed visuals of people being moved in stretchers

and being taken away in ambulances.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the

aircraft departed at 1.39 p.m. (0809 GMT) from runway 23. It

gave a "Mayday" call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter no

there was no response from the aircraft.

Flightradar24 also said that it received the last signal

from the aircraft seconds after it took off.

"The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with

registration VT-ANB," it said.

Boeing ( BA ) did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.

The last fatal plane crash in India involved Air India

Express, the airline's low-cost arm.

The airline's Boeing ( BA )-737 overshot a "table-top" runway

at Kozhikode International Airport in southern India in 2020.

The plane skidded off the runway, plunging into a valley and

crashing nose-first into the ground.

Twenty-one people were killed in that crash.