Eyewitnesses say they heard a blast-like sound, saw fire fall from the sky, and saw two pilots land in a nearby thicket.
Witnesses to the crash of two Indian Air Force fighter jets on Saturday in Morena, Madhya Pradesh, which killed a pilot, said they heard a loud noise and saw balls of fire falling to the ground, then saw two people in uniform parachuting into a thicket nearby.
The Indian Air Force’s Sukhoi 30MKI and Mirage-2000 planes both crashed during a routine training mission in the morning. The two pilots of the Sukhoi 30MKI managed to get out of the plane safely, but the pilot of the Mirage-2000 was killed.
Some of the pieces of the two planes fell in the Pahargarh area, which is 75 kilometres from the district headquarters. Other pieces fell in Bharatpur, which is just across the border in the state of Rajasthan.
#WATCH | Wreckage seen. A Sukhoi-30 and Mirage 2000 aircraft crashed near Morena, Madhya Pradesh. Search and rescue operations launched. The two aircraft had taken off from the Gwalior air base where an exercise was going on. pic.twitter.com/xqCJ2autOe
— ANI (@ANI) January 28, 2023
Eyewitnesses said that people who had gathered at the scene pulled the two pilots out of the thicket and laid them on the ground until an IAF helicopter came and took them to Gwalior for medical care. This is where the two planes had taken off on the routine training mission.
They said that pieces of the two planes were scattered over an area of 500 to 800 metres, about 4 km from Pahargarh, and were on fire.
Eyewitnesses said that people in the area tried to put out the flames on the two planes by throwing mud. Soon, more than 1,500 people from 15 villages in the area crowded into the area.
“I was standing here with some other people when we heard a loud noise from above that sounded like a bomb going off. “When we looked up, we saw balls of fire falling. Some of them landed in a forest path here, and some landed in Bharatpur on the other side,” Pahargarh sarpanch Shailendra Shakya told reporters at the scene.
“We saw two parachutes coming down, and we waited for the two people to land for about 15 to 20 minutes. But they slipped and hurt themselves when they fell into the thicket. We took them out of the bushes and put them on the ground. “While we were talking to the two pilots in uniform, an IAF helicopter came and took them to Gwalior,” Shakya said.
He said that a body that had been cut up and had its hands cut off was found near the wreckage. He also said that local and IAF officials went to the site and started a search.
Veeru, who lives in Pahargarh, said that he was near where the accident happened at 10:30 a.m.
“I saw the front of an aeroplane that was on fire. I could see smoke coming from a place about 5 km away. We tried to put out the fire with mud because we didn’t have any water, but it didn’t work,” he said.
He said that Sarpanch Shakya called the police and the fire department after what happened.
