Global News Podcast - More than 240 people dead in Air India crash

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

More than 240 people killed in a plane crash in Ahmedabad. The Air India flight crashed into a residential area shortly after take-off. Also, Iran accused of failing to meet nuclear safeguard obligations.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 13 Hours GMT on Thursday the 12th of June, these are our main stories. Police in the Indian city of Ahmedabad say there appear to be no survivors from the plane that crashed with more than 240 people on board. The Boeing 7878 Dreamliner came down in a residential area moments after takeoff. And the UN's nuclear watchdog has passed a resolution declaring that Iran has not complied with its nuclear obligations.

Also in this podcast. He was a humble musical giant, had a huge musical intellect. At the same time, he didn't need attention, didn't want attention. He was only interested in making the best possible music. We look back at the life of Brian Wilson, the co-founder of the Beach Boys, who's died at the age of 82. And we begin in the Indian state of Gujarat, where, as we record this podcast, emergency workers are scrambling to extinguish flames and search through the

debris after a passenger plane crashed into a residential area shortly after takeoff. It was an Air India flight bound for London and had more than 240 people on board. Video posted online shows that within seconds of leaving the ground, it had crashed into buildings and burst into flames. Randeer Jaiswal is a spokesman for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. What has happened in Ahmedabad is a very tragic accident. We have lost a lot of people. We extend our deepest condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones. There are, I understand, several foreigners also. Everybody is concerned and we once again convey our deepest condolences to all the families who have lost their loved ones.

The Indian Prime Minister has described the plane crash in Ahmedabad as heart-breaking beyond words. Narendra Modi said he had been in contact with ministers and officials involved in the emergency response. We'll be hearing more from the airport shortly. First though to our South Asia regional editor, Ambar Hasan Etirajan. The emergency services are still trying to retrieve people as well as the various parts of this aircraft and trying to rescue people from some of the buildings that caught fire on the ground as the plane hit this

residential area this morning. So it was a very chaotic scene because it was not simply one rescue, it seemed to be now multiple rescues and that's why what the police commissioner was saying a short while ago, there appeared to be no survivors in the crash, which is a very sad news for the families of those people who were on board this plane and he was also talking about some casualties on the ground and because of the nature of this incident where people have been taken to different places, they are not able to come out with any particular numbers. But what the fear is that the numbers could be very high and there were more than 240

people on board this plane that was en route to Gatwick in London. And for Air India, how devastating is this for Air India? It is indeed very bad news for this company. It is one of the biggest in Asia. They have more than 200 aircraft. This was a state-run airline for a long time. It was a symbol of pride for India. Then it was running into huge losses because of mismanagement and the schedules and financial problems. It was taken over by the famous conglomerate Tata's in 2022 and since then they have been trying to revamp the service by buying new planes from Boeing and in fact I traveled in

one of them from Delhi to London last month but they were also facing other issue like because of the India-Pakistan conflict recently, Pakistan closed their airspace for many Indian airlines. So the flights coming out of Delhi and Northern India, they have to go all the way to Arabian Sea, Mumbai on the western side, come all the way to Arabian Sea, Iraq and then to Europe. So that was costing them already a lot of money. So the Air India says they are looking into it, boeing, they say they are in touch with Air India. It's a massive blow for the company but the other planes are operating at the moment.

That was Ambaraasan Etirajan. And since we came into the studio, more information is being released. We've just heard from the police chief in Ahmedabad city. He says that more than 200 bodies have been recovered from the plane crash site so far. And he says that more than 40 injured people have been taken to hospitals. Our reporter Roxy Ghagdey Kaur spoke to us from the site of the plane crash. You can hear the sound of the fire vehicles, this firefighting vehicles, they are constantly moving from one place to another. They're trying to go to the fire since last two hours, but still the fire is going on. We saw some bulldozer being bought right now to remove the scrap so that the people who have died in this accident, their bodies can be taken out because with the help of this bulldozer, you know, some walls, trees and other structure

has fallen down because of this crash. Media is not allowed to go near the site right now. But when we reach here, we saw that after the crash, the wing of the plane was on the road over here. We are at the one side of the runway. This is the Meghani Nager area. It's a densely populated area. The site of the accident place, the place where plane crash, even a multi-story residential building is very near to the to that place. The site of the accident right now is a place where the government officials, especially the medical staff were living. The entire area is very densely populated. When we talk to some people, there were some people living in huts near the main gate of the campus. Even those people might have died.

That's what the local residents fear. So, you know know the area is quite densely populated and the number of deaths because of this crash of the people living in the area is yet to be identified. Roxy Ghegdey Kaur in Ahmedabad. Well investigating what caused the crash is going to be a lengthy and difficult process but already some early theories are emerging. Here's the aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas. There's over 1,100 787s in service around the world. They've been flying for 11 years and just recently carried its one billionth passenger and up till today had a perfect safety record. Now to the Air India 787, this was one of the first ones delivered, a 787-8.

It took off, it was in the air for about a minute, but what disturbs me is that after takeoff, the first thing that happens as soon as you have positive climb, you retract the undercarriage and then slowly as speed increases you retract the flaps which are in a take-off setting which is different to the landing setting. It's a lesser flap setting but when I'm looking at this vision of this 787 that's taken off and now sinking down into to crash the undercarriage is still down down into to crash. The undercarriage is still down but the flaps have been retracted. Now I'm just wondering whether in fact there was some possible error in the cockpit. I don't know. It's very unusual for the for the undercarriage still to be down a minute or two after takeoff. It's normally retracted within

10 to 15 seconds and then the flaps are then retracted over a period of about 10 to 15 minutes. So that's something I think the investigators would look at. Is it possible there was some confusion in the cockpit? Was it possible that the flaps were retracted and not the undercarriage? That happened in the United Kingdom. It's called Papa India. It's a BEA Trident at Heathrow Airport. The flaps were retracted

and not the undercarriage. And it was a terrible tragedy back in the early 70s. It has happened before. That would, to me, indicate because the plane simply sank. It didn't lurch from one side to the other, showing a possible mechanical problem, a control problem of some kind. It looked as though, for all intensive purposes, it was coming into land. It appeared to be completely in control, just sank into the ground and that would be a stall that was happening because there was not a enough lift over the wings to sustain flight. That was Jeffrey Thomas. Well our correspondent Archana Shukla spoke to us from Mumbai. The scale of the crash in a densely populated area like that of Ahmedabad and the region, the local region where it crashed, clearly shows the extent of the crash

and the impact it had. There is a large scale rescue operation currently ongoing. We have visuals from the ground with local teams sending us visuals which shows that people are trying to douse the fire, which is quite a severe one and they've been trying for the last few hours and the fire has yet not been doused. The area where the plane crashed, which was the dining area of a medical college hostel, there are visuals coming in of the tail of the aircraft being perched atop that building. That area is also, you know, rescue operations are going on to find survivors over there

and to ferry them to the hospital. Tell us about the reaction, the immediate reaction in India and how it's being reported there. It's absolutely tragic. Everybody was taken by surprise when a news like that came in. And you know the fact that it happened in a very densely populated area in Ahmedabad, it's a densely populated city, it crashed in a residential area, has created panic across. We have accounts from family members of those who were on board, who are trying to reach the airport and trying to get more information about whether they have survived, not survived, which hospital are they in.

It's literally a scene of panic on the ground. Across the country there is this sense of that the tragedy has hit, but in Ahmedabad, officials from police to the rescue operations, the rescue teams, etc. Local people have jumped onto the scene to help with whatever they can, whether it is to bring in water, food for people or to help ferry bodies from ground to the hospital hospital etc. So it's really a scene of tragedy on ground here. That was Archana Shukla in India. In other news now, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has

passed a resolution that says Iran isn't complying with its nuclear safeguard obligations. It's the first time such a motion has been passed in 20 years and it calls on Iran to explain without delay nuclear material found at several locations not declared as nuclear sites by Tehran. Kazran Aji of the BBC Persian Service is in Vienna. It's an important resolution tabled by the United States, France, Germany and Britain. And it's the first time, as you said, in 20 years that such a resolution is being passed and Iran is being found non-compliant with its nuclear obligations in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It's a serious charge and the last time this was done Iran was immediately referred to the UN Security Council and it was the start of a series of resolutions that imposed more and more international sanctions against Iran. This was before the JCPOA, the agreement in 2015. But now, again, Iran is noncompliant and the Western powers which have tabled this resolution hope that Iran will take this as yet another chance to cooperate. Otherwise, they're saying probably in five or six or seven weeks from now, if Iran doesn't cooperate, they will pass another resolution taking Iran to the Security Council again. And what does Iran say?

Iran reacted as Iran would. They said that they will come up with an immediate reaction a few days ago last night, and today, immediately after this resolution was passed, there was a statement from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran saying that they're not going to relent to pressure. They're saying that this resolution is the result of the IAEA and its board of governors being politicized by the Western powers and they saying that they're going to do whatever they want to do. They continue. They're saying that their nuclear program is peaceful and yet they announced today that they have ordered the establishment of a new

nuclear enrichment facility in what they call a secure place. They don't say where it is. So obviously they're going to keep that secret for the time being at least. But it shows that Iran in reaction has expanded its activities. That was Kazranaji in Vienna. Still to come in this podcast, the Korean bakery chain that says croissant don't have to be French. It's an international brand. Like croissant, could you say this is like European product?

I would say it's a universal product, right? To Balimina in Northern Ireland now. On Wednesday night, for a third night in a row, angry mobs went on a rampage through the streets of the town, which is about half an hour from Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. The violence was sparked by the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl. Clashes between police and rioters began on Monday after two 14-year-old Romanian boys appeared in court on charges of attempted rape. Homes and businesses have been set on fire and police officers have been attacked with bottles, bricks and fireworks. A leisure centre in a nearby town where some local families had taken shelter was set on fire.

Since the protests began, the town's immigrant community have largely stayed off the streets for fear of attack. Yelena is from the Philippines. She's been in Balamina for one year. I'm doing a little bit okay but still traumatised from what happened. Tell us about what happened. Well, it was the Tuesday night and we've already known about the protests and riot that happened but I didn't actually expect it would start from where I lived. It all started with just a little gathering where a bunch of people come in one place and then they started setting bonfires and then it just elevated from setting bonfires

to throw away flames like petrol bombs and then they started to burn the road. They also started to burn the road. They also started to throw things at our windows. What kind of stuff were they throwing at your windows? Stones, bricks, empty bottles like glass bottles, a woods, trash and we just got off our windows, closed our lights the whole time until they finished. What was going through your mind when people were throwing bricks and stones and glass bottles at your windows? I was just thinking if my house can be thrown at petrol bombs as well, or is my house going

to be set on fire? Should I evacuate? And I also thought of leaving house, but I couldn't because they're outside our house. So I just gathered all my important documents, my visa, my passport, and then we just gathered it in one place with the other Filipinos that are in the building as well. How long did you stay inside your house without leaving? It all started at about 7, 7.30 p.m. upwards until like almost 3 a.m. So I stayed like more than five hours, I think.

It also didn't make me rest well, so I wasn't able to go to work. Have you been able to go to work since it all started? On Monday, yeah, because it wasn't from our street. But Tuesday, no. Last night they also set fires on the roads from our street as well. But it just went not so violent. They just flamed up the roads and they actually started to smash the houses from the other streets, but they didn't do anything to our building since we got the Union Jack flag. I bought it this morning,

so it would just feel more safer and attackers wouldn't attack us because we have the Union Jack flag in our building. Yelena, who was speaking to Victoria Owolhunda from Balimina. The UN says that hundreds of thousands of people are slowly starving as food rations in refugee camps in Kenya drop to their lowest recorded levels. The recent cuts in funding from the United States and other donors has resulted in aid workers having to make difficult decisions about the amount of food refugees receive. The head of the UN's refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said Africa was the worst-affected part of the world.

And Soy has been to the Kakuma refugee settlement in northern Kenya, where food rations have been reduced and supplies are running out. There's very animated discussion at the watering point here at the settlement centre. One of them is shouting, Madam, there's not enough water. There are shelters that have been constructed using corrugated iron sheets and inside they are separated using cartons or tupleins for every family. We follow 28-year-old Agnes Livio, a refugee from South Sudan into her cubicle.

She's just picked up lunch from the kitchen. It serves refugees who've recently arrived and haven't settled yet. The portions are reduced because of aid cuts so she serves all her five children in one large plate. It's almost three o'clock and have the children eaten anything before now? No, they haven't eaten yet until now. This is the first meal of the day? What do the children say to you? They normally complain a lot.

Out here, just in front of me, I can see three sacks laid on the ground, just outside one of the tarpaulins. And they have boiled sorghum drying in the sun. So they spare some of that, dry it in the sun, and then grind it to make flour for porridge. So basically we've got to, in our own terms, stretch the utilisation of the resources that we have as far as possible. That's the World Food Programme's Felix Okich. He heads the refugee operations in Kenya. He says the agency started rationing food in 2018

to 80% of what a person should eat per day, then to half portions when Covid hit and then the Ukraine War broke out, draining donors funds. Now it's down to the lowest levels ever. We want to move that down further to providing 30 percent of the minimum food requirements. I'm walking down the middle aisle at the stabilization clinic at the local hospital. I meet nine-month-old James Ricotte with his mother Agnes Awila. A family of ten crossed over to Kenya from Karamoja in northern Uganda. The food is not enough.

Children eat only once a day. If there is no food, what do you feed them with? These children are tiny, emaciated, and many of them just look weak. And while I'm here, I've just been informed that there's a nine-year-old boy whose liver is failing as a result of severe acute malnutrition. WFP's Felix Oketch says discussions with donors about funding for 2025 stalled after the U.S. announced the stop-work order earlier this year.

It's even more concerning given that other donors have also pulled away with clear indications that they would not fill the gap. I've come to one of their warehouses that emptying fast. I can see bags of sorghum, and in front of me are cartons of vegetable oil from the US government. There are bags of split lentils with large prints of USAID, the agency that was disbanded. This may very well be the very last evidence of the aid that came through that agency. And less things change over the next two months, the refugees are staring at starvation come

August. That was Anne Soy reporting from Kenya. Brian Wilson, the creative force behind the Beach Boys, has died at the age of 82. His hits included Surf in USA, California Girls, I Get Around, Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, all of which have become classics. Elton John said he changed the goalposts when it came to writing songs and shaped music forever. In 1961 Brian Wilson and his brothers Dennis and Carl formed the Beach Boys which became one of the most commercially successful bands of all time with their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. Emma Barnett spoke to Al and asked him what Brian was like.

He was very very open, honest and friendly and always supportive of his team and meaning the Beach Boys, early Beach Boys and then later his own band the Brian Wilson band which I joined later in life. We became his second family, so it's just been wonderful. He was a humble musical giant, had a huge musical intellect that was apparent quite early on, and at the same time he didn't need attention, didn't want attention, was only interested in making the best possible music. And early on had his family around him, of course, the brothers, Wilson.

And then we, of course, were friends early on in high school. So I encouraged him to start recording and doing some of this music and sharing it with the world. And so we became one big happy family for many years. We started in a very humble way, thinking about domestic things like surfing and cars and girls and the more successful we became. He grew exponentially with each album and he learned to write creatively and taught us with that same energy how to interpret it because it's

important that you can write things down and put it on paper or whatever or record it on a machine of some kind but it has to be interpreted in a way that people can appreciate it. He was a good teacher, he was a great mentor and arranger, producer, he was the whole package. Could all of you beach boys surf? Were you good at surfing? Oh, sir, no, none of us. Oh, I shouldn't say that. Dennis Wilson, the drummer, of course, was the surfer. And it was his idea to write that first song. Hey, you guys should write a song about surfing. Well, that's what Brian did. The rest of you didn't surf?

No. But we learned. I attempted. He took me to the beach one day and my surfboard went straight down into the sand. And that was the last time I remember. Well, I did take lessons later on, but I sank like a stone. How should we remember your great friend? How should we remember Brian Wilson? Oh, as a real gentleman, a real musical intellect who taught the world how to smile. His brother Carl, when asked that same question, said Brian Wilson wrote music of joy and I thought that was quite accurate. Al Jardine on the life of Brian Wilson. Now when you think croissant you probably think delicious buttery breakfast and you probably think France. But the boss of a popular Asian bakery has told the BBC they may not

be exclusively French anymore, even if customers in Asia and around the world do still associate quality baked goods with France. Our business correspondent, Surinjana Tewari, caught up with the chairman of the company that owns Paris Baguette to find out more. Head into the basement of any bustling mall in Singapore and chances are you'll smell the sweetness of fresh and buttery baked goods. The lowest floor is usually where a lot of the food and beverage outlets are located in these malls. And there's often a great deal of variety. Thai food, Japanese food, Korean food, bubble tea. And each floor will also have a number of bakeries selling everything, from cream rolls and stuffed croissants to milk breads and fruity pastries.

I'm standing in one of these bakeries and the way it works is you take a tray and some tongs and pick up what you like from display cabinets before going to the counter and paying for it. Now even though these bakeries sell a lot of European or French inspired delicacies, they're almost always Asian owned. Paris Baguette is one such chain. It's clearly inspired by France. There's the name and outlets are decorated in the colours of the tricolour, the silence shows the Eiffel Tower, and the ambience is very Parisian cafe, but it's actually a hundred percent Korean owned. What started as a small family-owned shop 80 years ago has become a key player in mass producing bread and pastries in South Korea, and now the popular bakery is going global with 4,000 stores in 14 countries across Asia, Europe and the US.

I sat down with the president and chief executive of SPC Group, which owns Paris Baguette, Jinsu Ho, and asked him why a French-inspired brand is so popular. I wouldn't limit our bread to everything from France. It's an international brand. Like croissant, could you say this is like a European product? I would say it's a universal product, right? But going global for Paris Baguette or anyone else in the food business has its challenges. Figuring out local palates and tastes, changing food trends and of course, pricing. The bakery says its system of delivering frozen dough to stores around the world is both efficient

and means products have a longer shelf life than those from an artisanal bakery. Here's Jinsoo Heo again. It is so difficult to handle in the store because you need a lot of space, a lot of time, a lot of people. I would say that we didn't invent the frozen dough, but we built the system. For Paris Baguette, the ambition is having as many stores and serving as many customers as it can around the world. It's counting on a recent sponsorship deal with the British Football Club to help spread the word. You just signed a deal with Tottenham Hotspur.

What's the vision behind having a football deal like that? We want to be best in class for the bakery industry and Tottenham is also like primarily club. Despite challenges like the cost of living crisis, Paris Baguette is very optimistic about the future and its ambitious expansion plans, taking a little bit of Paris or rather Asia to the rest of the world. That was Surinjana Tewari in Singapore. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you would like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email.

The address is globalpodcastat bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfan and the producer was Ed Horton. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.