At least 18 people were killed on Friday (Aug 7) when a passenger jet was ripped in two after it overshot and skidded off the runway upon landing in southern India, officials said.

More than 100 others were injured, 16 of them seriously, after the Air India Express Boeing 737 from Dubai - a coronavirus evacuation flight - plunged off the runway down an embankment in heavy rain in Kozhikode.

Officials said that 191 passengers and crew were on board the plane that plummeted 10m off the so-called tabletop runway - which can be tricky to land on - in Kerala state. Mercifully, the plane did not catch fire.

Kozhikode official Seeram Sambasiva said that 17 people had died.

According to a patient list seen by AFP, the dead include a 10-month-old infant and an 18-month-old toddler.

The plane's pilot and the co-pilot were also killed in the accident, K Gopalakrishnan, chief of the Malappuram district in the southern state of Kerala, told Reuters.

One of the two pilots who died in the crash, Deepak Sathe, was a former Air Force fighter pilot, reports said.

"All passengers have been admitted to various hospitals, and they are also being tested for COVID-19," Gopalakrishnan said, adding autopsy of the bodies would be carried out according to the COVID-19 protocol.

Indian media quoted data from a flight tracker website showing that the aircraft appears to have attempted to land twice, with survivors telling local TV that the plane went up and down repeatedly before landing.

Rescue staff and locals hurried to the scene, desperately trying to free people from the wreckage in the dark and rain.

Several people on board had to be cut out with special equipment.

The flight was one of hundreds in recent months to bring home some of the tens of thousands of Indians stranded abroad by the coronavirus pandemic, many of them from Gulf countries to Kerala.

The last major plane crash in India was in 2010 when an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 from Dubai to Mangalore overshot the runway - again a tabletop landing surface - and burst into flames.

The crash killed 158 people and left eight survivors.