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Millions of people expected for potentially biggest day of demonstrations since president’s second term began

As tanks and soldiers parade through the streets of Washington on Saturday, millions of people around the countryare expected to turn outin their communities to speak out against the excesses of Donald Trump’s administration in what’s expected to be the biggest day of protest since his second term began.

The protests, dubbed “No Kings”, are set to take place throughout Saturday inabout 2,000 sitesnationwide, from big cities to small towns. Acoalitionof more than 100 groups have joined to plan the protests, which are committed to a principle of nonviolence.

This week, Trump has deployed national guard and US marine troops to Los Angeles to crack down on protesters who have demonstrated against his ramped-up deportations, defying state and local authorities in a show of military force that hasn’t been seen in the US since the civil rights era. Interest in the Saturday protests has risen as a result, organizers said.

Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican,deployedhis state’s national guard to manage protests ahead of No Kings and amid ongoing demonstrations against Trump’s immigration agenda. In Florida, Republican governor Ron DeSantissaidthat people could legally run over protesters with their cars if they were surrounded. “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida,” he said.

A website for the protest cites Trump’s defying of the courts, mass deportations, attacks on civil rights and slashing of services as reasons for the protests, saying: “The corruption has gone too far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.”

The coalition will not hold a protest in Washington DC – an intentional choice to draw contrast with the military parade and to not give the president an excuse to crack down on peaceful protest. Philadelphia will host a flagship march instead, and a DC-based organization is hosting a “DC Joy Day” in the district that will “celebrate DC’s people, culture, and our connections to one another”.

Trump initially said people who protested the parade would be met with “very big force”, though the White House then attempted to clarify he was fine with peaceful protest. Asked about the No Kings protests during a White House event on Thursday, Trump said: “I don’t feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get things approved.”

Since the start of his second term, opposition to Trump has grown, manifesting in protests and demonstrations including against Elon Musk at his car company, against deportations, around his retribution agenda and government cuts.

Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium, which tracks political crowds,foundthat there had been three times as many protests by the end of March 2025 compared to 2017, during Trump’s first term, and that was before major protests in April and May. The biggest day of protest so far came on April 5, with “Hands Off”, which the consortium estimated drew as many as 1.5 million people, a lower figure than organizers cited.

“Overall, 2017’s numbers pale in comparison to the scale and scope of mobilization in 2025 – a fact often unnoticed in the public discourse about the response to Trump’s actions,” a new analysis from the consortium said.

Exclusive: Angela Rayner in race to persuade housing associations to take on social housing projects

Labour is “staking everything” on using billions of pounds of investment to reverse Britain’s decline,Angela Raynerhas said, promising people would feel the housing crisis ease by the end of the parliament.

The UK housing secretary is now in a race to persuade housing associations to take on social housing projects, with nearly £40bn for affordable and social homes to be spent over 10 years, the culmination of lengthy negotiations with the Treasury.

She admitted it was the start of a long road to attract associations under huge financial pressures to invest again in social housing. Many are turning down opportunities from developers when they offersection 106 homesas part of their social housing obligations.

Rayner said it was still unclear whether the majority of the homes would be for social rent. “We’re prioritising social rent,” she said. “Now we’ve got to go away and do some of the work with the social landlords.

“The priority of this government is to significantly increase the amount of social rents that are available because that is a real pressure point. I’ve got 164,000 children in temporary accommodation. You can do the maths on that. That is a hell of a lot so I need a hell of a lot of social homes.”

The housing secretary admitted she had once had significant doubts about the government’s ability to hit its 1.5m homes by the end of the parliament – which she still described as a “stretch target”. It is a pledge that industry experts have suggested cannot be met.

She said: “We know the only time that Britain has built at that sort of level is the post-second world war era and that was with massive amounts of social housing. At the beginning, when we inherited the£22bn black hole, we had meetings and I said: ‘let’s reassess this, are you sure we’re going to be able to do this?’”

Rayner said there had been no cabinet split over the resolve to try to meet it. She said: “They were absolutely clear that we’ve got to at least start to turn the tide on the housing crisis we’ve got.”

But the deputy prime minister said young people in insecure tenancies or on the social housing waiting list would not immediately begin to feel the effects of the investment.

She said: “I think that would be a challenge because there’s 1.4 million people on the social housing list, but what I can guarantee is that we’ll have the biggest wave of social housing and affordable housing in a generation. Yes, we will see an improvement, but I won’t solve the housing crisis that has been over a decade in the making within a couple of years, but I will get us on a very steep trajectory to the solution of it, and it will make a difference to people, this parliament.”

Rayner also promised that allowing social landlords to raise rents by 1 percentage point above inflation for the same period – a key demand of housing providers – should begin to bring improvements in the often abysmal standards of socially rented homes and said therenters’ rights billshould do the same for private tenants.

The minister, who grew up in social housing while raising her son while she was a teenager, said she had recently visited a friend from school in horrendous living conditions.

Rayner said: “She couldn’t use three rooms. It was a private landlord and she was frightened to raise it because the house would get condemned and then she’d not be able to live there with her kids, and the kids went to the local school.

“And she was paying ridiculous [rent]. I mean, she’d switched the kettle on and the washing machine would come on. The electrics were what I would consider to be really dangerous. And so I’m acutely aware that people have got really terrible living standards and they’re too frightened to raise the concern for even low-level repairs that people need.

“They’re really worried about the landlord having more power and then they’ll just throw them out on a no-fault eviction. And that’s why we’ve brought in the renters’ rights [bill] because we want to give people more protection so that they can challenge and get these repairs done.”

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Rayner said two-year-oldAwaab Ishak, who died because of the mouldy conditions in his council flat, was always on her mind. She said: “We’ve got to do this as a matter of urgency because we’ve already had one young child tragically die because of the living conditions they were in.”

The housing ombudsmansaid recentlythat “simmering anger at poor housing conditions” could boil over into social tension. Rayner said she was acutely aware too of the frustration of the younger generation, unable to buy a home or a social tenancy, with costs rising amid a decaying public realm and public services.

“It does worry me,” she said. “This is a generation that has not been given those opportunities, whether that’s through not having the industrial strategy, not having the investment in our public realm and public services.

“We’re doing that downpayment of investment now … whether that’s through the energy transition, which will bring us security as well for our energy needs, whether it’s the defence spending, which again is about security but will create thousands of skilled jobs. The construction industry, which means that those jobs will be available for people.

“It’s a government that’s going to do the hard yards to transform our economic outlook into the future.”

Another cost expected to increase significantly as a result of the spending review is council tax. It is expected to rise by 5% a year to pay for local services, though at councils’ discretion. Councils will receive a 1.1% increase in grant funding, but the spending review assumes spending power for councils would rise by 2.6% because of council tax rises.

For many councils, that small increase will still mean running an austerity-level service, even if billions are being spent on long-term infrastructure. Rayner is a self-described “creature of local government” and said it was the start of a long process of easing the pressures.

But she admitted it would be “challenging” for councils, even with the 5% rise. Rayner said: “I completely understand what the councils have been through during the austerity years and you can’t undo 14 years in 10 months. But we’ve listened and we’re starting to do the recovery phase.”

Peter Kyle calls on employees and businesses to act now to get to grips with technology amid forecasts of job losses

Workers in the UK should turn their trepidation over AI into “exhilaration” by giving it a try or they risk being left behind by those who have, the technology secretary has said.

Peter Kyle called on employees and businesses to “act now” on getting to grips with the tech, with the generational gap in usage needing only two and a half hours of training to bridge.

Breakthroughs such as the emergence of ChatGPT have sparked an investment boom in the technology, but alsoled to forecaststhat ahost of jobsin sectors ranging from law to financial serviceswill be affected.

However, Kyle said: “I think most people are approaching this with trepidation. Once they start [using AI], it turns to exhilaration, because it is a lot more straightforward than people realise, and it is far more rewarding than people expect.”

Kyle spoke after meeting tech company bosses to discuss a new government-industry drive to train 7.5 million UK workers – a fifth of the overall workforce – in AI by 2030, with the help of firms such as Google, Amazon and BT.

He said: “There’s no one in employment at the moment that is incapable of gaining the skills that will be needed in the economy in the next five years.

“That is the optimistic way of saying, act now, and you will thrive into the future. Don’t, and I think that some people will be left behind. And that’s what worries me the most.”

Kyle said there appeared to be a generational gap in AI, with over-55s using AI half as much as over-35s. Closing this gap would take two and a half hours of training, he said.

“People don’t need to get trained in quantum physics,” Kyle said. “They need to get trained in the basics of how AI works, how to interact with it, and to explore all of the potential it has for you as an individual in the workplace.”

Keir Starmeracknowledged this weekthat people were “sceptical” about AI and worry about it taking their job. Speaking at London Tech Week, the prime minister said the government would attempt to prove that technology can “create wealth in your community … create good jobs [and] vastly improve our public services”.

People inEnglish-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canadaare more nervous about the rise of AI than those in the largest EU economies, according to polling data shared with the Guardian last week.

Forecasts about the impact of AI on jobs vary, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warning the technology could trigger job losses in skilled professions such as law, medicine and finance. The International Monetary Fund has calculated 60% of jobs in advanced economies such as the US and UK are exposed to AI and half of these jobs may be negatively affected.

However, the Tony Blair Institute, which has called for widespread adoption of AI in the public and private sectors, has said potential UK jobs losses in the private sphere will be mitigated by the technology creating new roles.

Kyle said he was ready for a reset in the debate over AI and copyright after opposition to the government’s proposed overhaul of copyright law in the House of Lords ended. The data bill, a vehicle for peers’ opposition toproposals to let AI firms use copyright-protected work without permissionin order to develop their products, finally passed this week after lords did not submit further copyright-related amendments.

“I’m acting with humility and self-reflection about the things I could have done better in that process,” he said. “And I’ve made promises to move forward with a reset and a refocus on what will deliver the rights remuneration and opportunities for creatives in the digital age that they have enjoyed for generations in the analogue age – whilst travelling on that journey with the AI industry alongside.”

Survivors say careers of many of those involved show there are ‘no consequences for decisions that cost lives’

The survivors of the Grenfell fire have condemned “a deep and bitter injustice” that many of the officials criticised in the public inquiry in connection to the tragedy have continued working in related fields.

“We relive the pain every day. They are carrying on with life, careers intact, while we are still here – grieving, waiting and fighting for justice,” said a spokesperson for Grenfell United shortly before the eighth anniversary of the fire.

“The fact that some of the people involved are still working in housing is a slap in the face to every survivor and bereaved family. If there are no consequences for decisions that cost lives, what does that say about this country’s values? Justice delayed is justice denied – and we will not stop until those responsible are held to account.”

Dozens of the individuals implicated in the Grenfell disaster, from civil servants, government ministers, councillors and corporate executives have gone on to have successful careers, many of them still involved in housing and local government.

Laura Johnson, who was director of housing at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) at the time of the fire, is now an interim director of property and development at Barnet Homes, which manages and maintains 13,000 council homes.

The inquiry found she had slowed down the installation of self-closing mechanisms on fire doors for “financial and practical reasons”, despite being urged to do so by theLondonfire brigade. It was found that inadequate fire doors, particularly those lacking self-closing mechanisms, allowed smoke and fire to spread more quickly than expected on the night of the fire.

She alsopushed for a new contractor to carry out renovation works on the blockon a lower budget, which ultimately meant metal cladding was swapped for combustible plastic-filled panels to save money.

Johnson has continued working in the housing sector since the fire, including as a consultant at two housing associations and a council. Her LinkedIn profile states that in her current role she has “overarching responsibility” for delivering health and safety compliance “including fire and building safety”. Johnson has not responded to a request for comment.

Brian Martin, a civil servant who admitted to being a “single point of failure” on the run-up to the fire, has since gone on to act as afire safety expert witnessand testified in the first UK cladding tribunal case in 2023.

He allegedly said: “show me the bodies” – an accusation he has denied – when he was advised to tighten fire safety rules to prevent a tower block disaster, and was in charge of official building regulations for almost 18 years prior to the fire, which killed 72 people.

The inquiry found that in January 2016, 18 months before the Grenfell blaze, he had written that when ACM cladding was exposed to fire, “the aluminium melts away and exposes the polyethylene core. Whoosh.” He was then urged to tighten the rules on ACM panels in the UK but failed to do so.

He continued working within the Ministry of Housing,Communitiesand Local Government with a role in the planning directorate until at least 2022, although he no longer works in the department.

He gave evidence as a “fire safety expert” at a cladding tribunal in 2023 in which he was praised for “being balanced, knowledgable and thoughtful”. The Grenfell inquiry found he had no formal fire safety or engineering qualifications at the time of the fire. The Guardian has attempted to contact Martin for comment.

Deborah French was a sales manager at Arconic – the multibillion-dollar US company that made the combustible cladding panels on Grenfell Tower – and hasadmitted she knew the cladding she was selling could burnbut did not tell customers.

Before the fire, in 2015, she began working at the building materials supplier Taylor Maxwell, where she became their national cladding director, a role she held until 2023.

During the public inquiry she said she knew the polyethylene product could burn but she didn’t “specifically explain” this to her customers, although if she had been asked the question, she would have. She also said she had not seen the building regulations guidance on fire safety.

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Taylor Maxwell said French’s work during the course of her employment with them did not relate in any way to Grenfell Tower. The Guardian has attempted to contact French for comment.

Nicholas Paget-Brown, who was the leader of RBKC at the time of the blaze and initially resisted calls to resign in the face of mounting criticism of his authority’s response, now runs a consultancy firm on public policy issues.

He resigned weeks after the fire, after accusations of badly organised relief efforts and little support for residents who were left homeless. The inquiry report found he was “unduly concerned for RBKC’s reputation”, with the council’s response described as “muddled, slow, indecisive and piecemeal”.

According to Paget-Brown’s LinkedIn profile, he is a managing director of Pelham Consulting, which tracks manifesto commitments and offers briefings on public policy issues. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A Metropolitan police investigation into the Grenfell fire continues. Survivors and bereaved families have criticised the pace of the inquiry.

Stuart Cundy, a deputy assistant commissioner at the Met, said: “TheGrenfell Tower fireis one of the most complex investigations ever undertaken by any UK law enforcement agency. We are investigating a range of very serious criminal offences including corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter and fraud, as well as health and safety offences.

“We cannot begin to imagine the impact that waiting for the outcome of our investigation must have on those who lost loved ones, those who survived, and all those affected by the tragedy.”

He added that investigators had spent over a year forensically examining the tower, taking more than 13,000 witness statements and gathering more than 153m documents and files, with 195 dedicated investigators on the case.

Barnet Homes have been approached for comment.

Exclusive: Thinktank calls for stronger penalties for corporate negligence in England, including directorship and public-contract bans

Companies responsible for unsafe cladding should face unlimited fines and permanent bans from public contracts, according to a report that also says England’s existing laws have not gone far enough to prevent future tragedies.

The thinktank Common Wealth said the law fails to effectively hold companies to account for corporate negligence, leaving the door open for another disaster like the Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people in June 2017.

The report’s author, Leela Jadhav, said England was falling behind other countries which have stronger due diligence laws.

“TheGrenfell Tower firewas a disaster caused by corporate greed, not an accident,” she said. “Justice in real terms means sanctions, prosecutions and a more robust and enforceable accountability regime. Nearly a decade has passed – accountability is long overdue.”

A police investigation into the blaze is ongoing but there have been no criminal prosecutions to date. In February, the government announced that seven companies linked to Grenfell would be investigated and face possible debarment from public contracts.

The Grenfell inquiry, which concluded last year, found that “systematic dishonesty” led the tower block to be clad in combustible material, and firms such as Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan “manipulated the testing process, misrepresented data and misled the market”.

The thinktank reportsays corporate manslaughter laws, which can lead to sanctions including unlimited fines, have a “very high threshold for liability” meaning they are ineffective – there have only been 32 convictions since the law came into force in 2008.

It called for civil and criminal penalties for Grenfell-level negligence, including unlimited fines, disqualification of directors for up to 30 years and permanent exclusion from public procurement. Under the new Procurement Act, firms can only be excluded from public contracts for five years.

The report said financial penalties should be linked to a company’s global turnover, with no fixed upper limit, to ensure “meaningful deterrence”.

“A more effective approach might involve permanent debarment, an unlimited fine that amounts to significant disruption of corporate activities, disqualification of directors for 15 to 30 years, and a rebuttable presumption of life imprisonment,” the report stated.

The Corporate Justice Coalition, a group of more than 40 civil society organisations, is campaigning for a law to legally force companies to put procedures in place to prevent human rights and environmental abuses.

The “business, human rights and environment act” would force companies to publish an annual plan of their due diligence procedures and their effectiveness, with senior managers liable to a civil penalty if they failed to do so.

“Without proper visibility into corporate behaviour, accountability becomes a game of catch-up,” Jadhav said, adding that the English legal system only kicks in after the damage is done.

Grenfell United, which represents survivors and bereaved families from the fire, said it was“a deep and bitter injustice”that many of the officials criticised in the public inquiry for their actions have continued working in related fields.

The Common Wealth report said the threshold for individual accountability is very high and it is difficult to “allocate sufficient blame” so people “can be tried under the high threshold of criminal law”.

A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring that what happened at Grenfell is never forgotten, and to deliver the change needed so it can never happen again.“We can now take tougher, broader action against supplier misconduct using the Procurement Act’s debarment powers. By holding organisations to account, we will ensure our supply chains are secure and can deliver growth and renewal for working people through our Plan for Change.”

Northern Ireland faces stark questions over the racism, xenophobia and intolerance that has forced families from abroad to flee

First came the shouts as the crowd worked its way through narrow terraced streets, proclaiming its mission to rid the town of “scum”. Then came the shattered glass as rocks exploded through windows. Then the flames, licking up curtains and spreading to sofas, carpets, books and framed pictures until smoke billowed into the summer night.

They might have been scenes from another century, another country, but they played out inNorthern Irelandthis week in the glare of rolling news and social media, which recorded a soundtrack of glee and hate. “Where are the foreigners?” the mob shouted.

The targets werefamilies that were different– different nationality, different ethnicity, different skin tone, different language. The goal was expulsion – or immolation. “There’s someone in that room inside,” said a voice caught on video. “Aye, but are they local?” responded a comrade. “If they’re local, they need out. If they’re not local, let them stay there.”

No one died in Ballymena, the County Antrim town that erupted on Monday andflared for the rest of the week, or in other towns with smaller, copycat mayhem, but families fled, dozens of police were injured and Northern Ireland faced stark questions about racism, xenophobia and intolerance.

Three decades ago, the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles. Republican paramilitaries that wanted a united Ireland, and loyalist paramilitaries that wanted the region to remain in the UK, wound down the killing.

Peace brought the novelty of immigration and diversity. In the 2001 census just 14,300 people, or 0.8% of the overall population, belonged to a minority ethnic group. By 2021 it was 65,600 people, or 3.4%. Compared with England (18%), or Scotland (11%), Northern Ireland remains very white.

Despite this, many residents in Ballymena, a mainly working-class, Protestant town 25 miles north of Belfast, believe foreigners have “invaded”, “infested” and “ruined” their community.

It was not only the hundreds of young men in hoods and masks who hurled missiles: older residents, during lulls in violence, endorsed the disturbances. “We want our voices to be heard. If this is the only way, so be it,” said one woman in her 30s, who declined to be named.

The Police Federation of Northern Ireland said its members, by drawing the wrath of mobs, had averted a pogrom.

The spark was an alleged sexual assault on a teenage girl by two 14-year-old boys, who appeared in court with a Romanian interpreter and were charged with attempted rape. Loyalist groups in other areas took that as their cue to protest. “It’s time to take a stand and stop welcoming these illegal migrant gangs flocking into our town, paedophiles, drug pushers, human traffickers, prostitutes,” said a group in Portadown, exhorting people to march on a hostel.

Such hostility has a blunt, facile explanation: some communities do not like outsiders – a broad, evolving category known occasionally in Northern Ireland as “them ’uns”. Protestant loyalist mobs in Belfast burned Catholics from their homes at the outset of the Troubles in 1969. Ballymena earned notoriety in the 1990s and mid-2000s with sectarian attacks on Catholic schools and churches.

Loyalists in nearby towns have been blamed for a sporadic campaign of paint bombs, smashed windows, graffiti and threatening posters targeting non-white residents. Last year at leasteight African families– half of them including nurses – were forced toflee an estate in Antrim town.

“There is fundamental racism in some places that, to put it nicely, have a proud sense of social and cultural cohesion,” said Malachi O’Doherty, a commentator and author of How to Fix Northern Ireland. Communities that are accustomed to living on the same estate can bristle when outsiders take houses that might otherwise have gone to friends or relatives, he said. “Whether it’s Catholics or Roma, it’s seen as a dilution of that community.”

Just 4.9% of Ballymena’s population is non-white, according to the 2021 census, and very few of the new arrivals are asylum seekers, yet there is widespread belief in proliferating “scrounging refugees”, and scepticism about official statistics. “What we’re reading is completely different from what the government is telling us,” said one resident in his 50s. The riots were welcome and overdue, although, he said, the noise was disturbing his sleep.

The current strife has a seasonal aspect: summer is when loyalists – and to a lesser extent republicans – assert their identity by parading with drums and flutes and lighting bonfires, traditions that fuel tension and confrontation.

Catholics have joined Protestants in anti-immigrant actions and staged their own protests in Catholic areas, but those eruptions tend to be smaller and less frequent. “Catholics almost take a sectarian pride in not being racist. ‘Oh, we’re not like them,’” said O’Doherty.

Despite a gritty reputation, Northern Irelandscores betterfor housing, unemployment and poverty than many parts of England, Wales and Scotland. However, it has some of the worst education attainment rates in the UK and the highest rate of economically inactive people, metrics that hint at the alienation and hopelessness felt in some Catholic and Protestant working-class areas.

An education system that largely segregates the two main blocs also tends to silo minority ethnic pupils, said Rebecca Loader, a social science researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. “You have schools that have no diversity and schools with high levels, perhaps just separated by a few miles. Certain classes of people are never meeting. It’s not conducive to meeting and learning about the other.” Also, very little in Northern Ireland’s curriculum addresses racism, unlike curriculums in Britain, especially Wales, she said.

Two factors, neither unique to Northern Ireland, have aggravated the tension. One is politics. Leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned the violence and appealed for calm, as they did last August during asimilar flare-up. However, critics say some unionist parties – which represent loyalism – give mixed signals by defending “legitimate protest” and amplifying immigration myths.

Political unityfractured on Thursdayafter Gordon Lyons, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) communities minister, complained on social media that he had not been consulted about a leisure centre in Larne hosting families evacuated from Ballymena. A short time later, a mob set the centre on fire. Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, called on Lyons to reflect on his comments. Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, suggested he should resign.

Paul Sceeny, an interim manager at the North West Migrants Forum in Derry, said growing internationalantipathy to immigrantswas affecting Northern Ireland. “People are becoming emboldened to use racist tropes. It’s part of a wider pattern,” he said.

The other factor is social media. Protest organisers use Facebook, TikTok and other platforms to rally support and broadcast the results. In Ballymena, rioters reportedly requested likes, follows and gifts from viewers while livestreaming the destruction of a house.

During the daytime calm this week, while authorities cleared debris from streets and foreign families packed up and left, youths huddled over phones and analysed clips, like actors reviewing a performance, seeking ways to improve before the next show.

True scale of tragedy still unfolding as accounts from family members of those onboard begin to emerge

‘I saw people dying in front of my eyes’: British survivor describes Air India crash

As he dropped off his only daughter at Ahmedabad airport, Suraj Mistry seized the opportunity to take one final family selfie before she went back to London. Kinal Mistry, 24, had laughed lovingly at her father as he made her promise that they would meet again soon. “Yes, Daddy, very soon,” she said.

Instead, the photo – of Kinal smiling beside her mother and father – would commemorate the last time his family was a whole. In scenes of horror that have since reverberated around the world, just a few minutes after the flight took off from Ahmedabad airport on Thursday morning, it plummeted from the sky, exploding in an inferno of fire and black smoke. Only one of the 242 people onboard survived.

Yet even as fragmented bodies and charred limbs continued to be uncovered by rescue teams from the site of the crash, Mistry could not bring himself to accept that Kinal – whom he described as a beautiful dancer “so full of life” – was among the dead. Like so many on board, her body had yet to be identified, let alone given back to the family.

Mistry, sitting in the Civil hospital in Ahmedabad, still in the same clothes he wore when he took his daughter to the airport, was among hundreds of families desperately waiting for answers and clinging to diminishing hope.

“What can I say about Kinal? She was a wonder,” said Mistry, as he began to cry. “She lit up every room with her smile, she could strike up a friendship with anyone. She was beautiful, inside and out. That’s just who she was.”

Her life was only just beginning, he said. She had just got married and moved to London last year where she worked as a choreographer and had also set up a food business out of her own kitchen, as “she loved nothing more than feeding people”.

He said: “In just one day, our whole world has fallen apart. I don’t know if it makes me foolish, but I’m still hoping. Hoping for a miracle. Please, just one miracle.”

The true scale of the tragedy was still unfolding on Friday, as images and accounts of those who were onboard AirIndiaflight 171 began to trickle out and the true death toll – officially about 265 – still remained unclear. The government Civil hospital in Ahmedabad appeared overwhelmed with the scale of bodies in the morgue and the task of identifying them, with only about six returned to families by Friday. Amid the suffocating summer heat, the stench of bodies hung heavy in the air.

More than 200 relatives flocked to a makeshift centre in the hospital medical college to give DNA samples to help identify the bodies, many of which were brought to the hospital morgue mangled beyond recognition. Officials said some had been reduced almost to ash.

What was clear was that the disaster had wrought untold devastation on hundreds of families across India and the UK. Prateek Joshi, a radiologist who worked at a hospital in Derby, had boarded the flight with his wife, Komi Vyas, also a doctor, and their three children, ready for the whole family to start their new life together in the UK.

In their excitement, they all crammed into one final photo together before takeoff; mother and father beaming in the foreground, their five-year-old twin sons Nakul and Pradyut and eight-year-old daughter Miraya smiling from the seats in the next aisle. Not long after, the whole family was dead.

For another passenger, Sahil Salim Ibrahim Patel, from a small village in Gujarat, this was his first ever international flight, en route to London for a dream scholarship that he believed would change his family’s life forever. Meanwhile, Prakash Lal Minarhia, who had been working as a chef in London for 15 years, had come back to India to perform the rituals for the recent death of his father.

Minarhia’s relatives said they still had not been able to bring themselves to inform his mother and wife, who remained in their village, about the crash. “Until we have his body, nothing is certain,” said Uday Lal Minarhia, 48, a farmer.

Rescuers and forensic teams continued to scour the wreckage on Friday amid scorching temperatures. Naresh Soni, an officer from the National Forensic Sciences University, said the teams were “not only racing against time, but also intense heat. With each passing hour in these extreme temperatures, the risk of biological sample degradation and contamination rises sharply – possibly making the identification of bodies difficult and potentially unreliable.”

As it crashed to the ground, the plane collided with a residential hostel housing hundreds of medical students who were studying at the nearby medical college. Many were eating lunch when the 227-tonne plane smashed down, obliterating the canteen wall and killing at least five students, with at least 50 more injured.

Yet many who had been in the vicinity of the hostel – which stood blackened and ominously empty on Friday – still remained missing, yet to be counted among the official dead. As Anita Ben Thakur arrived at the crash site, which was cordoned off by police, she demanded to be let through the barricades. “Let me through, let me through, my mother is inside,” she pleaded with police, before breaking down in tears.

Her mother, Sarla Ben, had been the cook in the hostel canteen for the past 15 years and had been serving food to the student doctors at Thursday lunchtime. She had also brought her two-year-old granddaughter to work with her. Neither have been seen since.

“Since yesterday, I’ve been trying to find my mother, but I’ve failed miserably,” she said. “I’ve been running around the entire night, and waiting outside the hospital patiently, hoping for some news – but nothing. And now, they’re not even allowing us near the debris to look for her ourselves.”

Sitting on the pavement outside the hospital morgue, Suresh Bhai Patni, 39, a rickshaw driver, put his head in his hands. On Thursday afternoon, as he did most days, his 15-year-old son Akash Patni had gone to deliver lunch to his mother at the tea stall she ran, situated outside the student hostel. The family would meet at the stall every evening.

At the moment his mother, Sita Devi, sat down to eat, and Akash was watching over the tea, the plane hit the hostel and immediately engulfed the stall in flames. Devi ran towards the stall in an attempt to save her son, and was caught up in the fire, but to no avail. Akash’s charred corpse was later recovered by the authorities.

Devi survived but is seriously ill with burns over more than half of her body. “She keeps asking me about Akash, but I just tell her he is also being treated,” said Patni. “How do I tell her the truth? I’m afraid she’ll lose the will to survive. And I can’t afford to lose her too. Not now. Not after this.”

Yet among the grief, many clung to what they saw as a single miracle to emerge from the tragedy; the sole survivor, 38-year-old British-Indian Vishwash Kumar Ramesh. Still confined to a hospital bed, he had only bruises and scratches to show for the incident.

Speaking to the Indian state broadcaster, the only outlet allowed into the hospital ward on Friday, Ramesh still remained hazy about how he had survived, but it appeared he had jumped out of the emergency exit door. “I still can’t believe how I got out alive,” he said.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh must have acted fast to seize his unlikely chance to escape, say experts in crashes and safety

‘I saw people dying in front of my eyes’: British survivor describes Air India crash

Tony Cable, a former senior air crash investigator, has one piece of advice for Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the AirIndiaplane disaster: “Buy a lottery ticket straight away.”

The 40-year-old Briton walked away from the wreckage of flight AI171 after it crashed less than a minute after takeoff from Ahmedabad to London on Thursday, killing 241 other passengers and crew and dozens more on the ground.

Surviving with minor physical injuries seemed miraculous, but the focus on how Ramesh may have stayed alive turned to his seat on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – 11A, an emergency exit seat near the front of the plane and close to one of the strongest parts of the fuselage known as the “wing box”.

After the plane slammed into buildings about 30 seconds after takeoff, Ramesh thought he was dead, but when he realised he was alive he saw an opening in the fuselage. “I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,” he said. It was not clear whether this opening was the door or a rupture in the fuselage.

“The aircraft was pretty nose up when it hit the buildings,” said Cable, a former senior inspector of air accidents at the UK Air Accidents Investigations Branch. “It has presumably broken open in an area of the fuselage adjacent to this guy and fortuitously he has popped out without major injury.”

Ramesh’s seat had space, rather than seats, immediately in front of it, which may have given him more room for escape than many of his fellow passengers. It may also have meant that while the passengers in front of him may have been crushed together on impact, he avoided that fate, Prof John McDermid, Lloyd’s Register chair of safety at the University of York, said.

“My suspicion is that because of the nature of the impact, he was in a strong part of the airplane at the front edge of the wing,” he added. “There is not just the fuselage, but the extra structure of the wing to protect from the compression of the fuselage.”

“It’s possible that the impact loosened the door and he could kick it out and get out,” McDermid said. “The external door was only just in front of him so he didn’t have far to go.”

But before Ramesh could even consider an escape, he had to have the luck to survive the impact of the crash.

“If you’ve got an accident like this, where you’ve got an aircraft full of fuel and it’s making a crash landing off the airport into the built environment, that’s unlikely to be a survivable accident,” said Prof Ed Galea, an expert in fire safety and evacuation at the University of Greenwich. “The fact that anyone has survived is miraculous.

“He seems to have been lucky in that: a) he survived the trauma of the impact, b) he wasn’t severely injured in that crash, and c) he was sitting right by the No 2 exit. Whether he used that or exited via a rupture that was close by, is not clear. But he was very close to an exit point.”

Galea has previously carried out research on plane crashes which found that, in less devastating crashes, people sitting within five rows of a serviceable exit have a greater chance of surviving than dying while those more than five rows away were more likely to perish. He said he always tries to reserve a seat within five rows of an emergency exit.

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Galea said other passengers may have also survived the impact but were too injured to evacuate or were not close enough to an exit point. Passengers who did not adopt the brace position may have struck their heads on the seats in front of them knocking them unconscious, but there were no seats immediately in front of Ramesh.

While the structure of the plane may have given him a chance at survival, Ramesh still needed to move fast to take that chance, said McDermid. “If he hadn’t got out in a very few seconds, he would have been unlikely to make it out because of the fireball,” he added.

The plane had enough fuel on board to carry it to London Gatwick and this appeared to ignite upon impact.

Galea said Ramesh may have found himself exiting in front of the fireball if the aviation fuel had been pouring from the ruptured tanks in a rearward direction.

“He was a very, very unlucky man being on that airplane, but he was also a very, very lucky man being able to get out,” McDermid concluded.

Bhoomi Chauhan says she was 10 minutes late and asked airline staff to let her through but was turned away

A student who was booked on the AirIndiaflight to London Gatwick that crashed on Thursday missed boarding the plane by 10 minutes due to traffic.

Bhoomi Chauhan, a Bristol-based business administration student, was on holiday in western India and had booked to travel home on flight AI171.

However, the 28-year-old was turned away by airline staff after arriving at Ahmedabad airport less than an hour before the flight was due to depart.

The plane crashed into a medical college shortly after takeoff, killing 241 people onboard. A British man, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was thesole survivor. At least five medical students were also killed and about 50 injured, and there are fears the number of people killed on the ground could rise.

Chauhan had checked in online and was assigned the economy-class seat 36G. She arrived at the airport at 12.20pm local time, 10 minutes after boarding was scheduled to start.

She told the BBC’s Gujarati service: “We got very angry with our driver and left the airport in frustration … I was very disappointed. We left the airport and stood at a place to drink tea and after a while, before leaving … we were talking to the travel agent about how to get a refund for the ticket. There, I got a call that the plane had gone down.”

The student said it was a miracle that she had missed her flight, having been caught in traffic in Ahmedabad city centre after travelling from Ankleshwar, about 120 miles south of Ahmedabad.

She said: “When I missed the flight, I was dejected. [The] only thing that I had in mind was: if I had started a little early, I would have boarded the plane. I requested airline staff to allow me inside as I am only 10 minutes [late]. I told them that I am the last passenger and so please allow me to board the plane, but they did not allow me.”

Investigations are continuing into the cause of the crash, the first involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Foreign Office said any British nationals requiring consular assistance or who had concerns about family or friends should call 020 7008 5000.

Airline’s maintenance regime will also be scrutinised as experts offer theories for cause of disaster

The official investigation into AirIndiaflight AI171 is focusing on the Boeing 787’s engine thrust, wing flaps and landing gear, with the airline’s maintenance regime also coming under scrutiny.

Withone black box now retrievedfrom the wreckage of the plane, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is looking at whether the plane’s engine thrust and wing flaps failed, and why the landing gear remained open.

According to a Reuters report quoting a source with direct knowledge, investigators will also look at whether Air India was at fault, including on maintenance issues.

Flight AI171 issued a mayday call to air traffic control moments after takeoff from Ahmedabad on Thursday, having barely left the runway before descending and crashing into a building,killing all but one of the 242 people onboard.

While the digital flight data recorder has been recovered from the rooftop of the building, the cockpit voice recorder that could shed light on the pilots’ actions has not been found.

According to the Reuters source, a bird strike leading to double engine failure – which forced the miraculous landing ofUS Airways flight 1549 in 2009on New York’s Hudson river, and had been put forward by a range of experts as a potential explanation – was “not among the key areas of focus”. CCTV footage appears to show clouds of dust at take-off but no birds.

Teams of anti-terror experts were part of the investigation process, they said.US and UK officials were joining the India-led inquiry.

While cautioning against jumping to conclusions, aviation analysts have put forward a range of theories of possible causes for the tragedy – the first fatal crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Dr Sonya Brown, a senior lecturer in aerospace design at the University of New South Wales, said the footage suggested the plane had stalled. “It does look to me like a significant loss of thrust. Aircraft lift is proportional to speed squared, so if you don’t have thrust and you lose speed – and radar data suggests after the initial short climb it was losing speed – you can stall,” Brown said.

What caused the lack of thrust remained unclear, Brown said.

According to some analysts’ interpretation, the video footage shows the plane’s wing flaps were not extended during takeoff. These panels on the wings of a plane can be extended to help generate lift and are key during takeoff and landing – the points in flight when most air accidents occur.

However, Brown said that even if the flaps were not deployed, a stall could still be avoided with increased thrust – adding that incorrect thrust settings due to human error could be one cause. She also noted that while the plane was modern, it was 11 years old, so the potential for inadequate maintenance could be investigated.

While pilot error is a potential avenue of any crash investigation, the Air India captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar were highly experienced; Sabharwal had clocked up more than 8,000 flying hours in 22 years as a commercial airline pilot.

Questions about the plane itself are less immediate than in the aftermath of the Boeing 737 Max crashes of 2018 and 2019, which came soon after that model’s entry into service.

Although India’s aviation regulator has directed Air India to carry out safety inspections on its 33 remaining 787 fleet, the model has been flown for more than a decade by the Indian carrier and airlines worldwide, with relatively few problems.

Air India has also been ordered to carry out “additional maintenance actions” on the fleet, which is equipped with GE Aerospace engines – not the Rolls-Royce Trent 1,000 engines fitted to many 787s, which were grounded to address defects in recent years.

Neil Hansford, a former pilot and chair of the Strategic Aviation Solutions consultancy, said other theories the investigators should examine were potential sabotage, noting political tensions in Gujarat state, of which Ahmedabad is the capital.

Contaminated fuel was another possibility, he said. The plane’s fuel tank was reportedly near-full, but Hansford said contaminants could lead to clogging. “Blocking fuel could cause an engine problem,” he said.

The 787 is a two-engine plane but is able to fly on one engine, one of many layers of redundancy – from backup power sources, computer monitoring systems such as autopilot and the ability for a plane to glide – baked into modern aviation that has made it, despite this latest tragedy, one of the statistically safest forms of transport.

But, Brown said: “All of these things are more effective if you have time, but this happened so soon after takeoff. If you had the same issue at 40,000ft, it’s very different to 400ft. There’s just not many layers of redundancy at that altitude.”