Bangladesh air force training jet crashes into Dhaka school campus, killing at least 31
Officials said the pilot tried to steer the aircraft away from dense areas, but the crash still left dozens dead and many more injured.
A Bangladesh air force training aircraft crashed into the campus of a college and school in Dhaka on July 21, killing at least 31 people, including the pilot, and injuring 171 others, according to the military.
The F-7 BGI aircraft went down in the Uttara neighbourhood at about 1 p.m. local time while students were taking tests or attending classes. The crash hit Milestone School and College, turning an ordinary school day into a mass-casualty emergency.
The military said flight lieutenant Mohammed Toukir Islam made every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas toward a less inhabited location. Even so, the plane struck the campus and left a scene of intense fire, smoke and destruction.
The scale of the injuries made the disaster even more severe. Al Jazeera reported that 171 people were hurt, and many of the victims were treated at Dhaka’s National Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute. Most of the injured were aged between eight and 14, according to the report, and at least 25 of the dead were children.
Videos from the aftermath showed firefighters battling the wreckage and people screaming as they tried to make sense of the explosion and fire. A school teacher told Reuters that he heard an explosion after turning back near the gate while picking up children, then saw only fire and smoke.
The interim government of Muhammad Yunus announced a day of national mourning and expressed deep grief over the loss of students, parents, teachers, staff and others. An emergency hotline was activated at the burn institute, and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society called for donations for the injured.
The crash is particularly sobering because it came just over a month after another deadly aviation disaster in neighboring India. But the Bangladesh accident stands on its own as a campus tragedy in the middle of the school day, with children among the majority of the victims.
Authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash. For now, the confirmed facts are grim enough: a military training jet went down in a populated area of Dhaka, and at least 31 people did not survive.
The image of a military aircraft crashing into a school campus during class hours is likely to dominate public memory of the disaster. The official death toll and injury count show that the impact reached far beyond the aircraft itself and into families, classrooms and hospital burn wards.
The crash will almost certainly lead to questions about flight operations, emergency response and how the aircraft was allowed to enter a populated area. For the families affected, though, those inquiries arrive after a catastrophe that is already measured in children, burn injuries and funerals.
