Dhaka, July 21: A Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into a school building in Dhaka shortly after takeoff on Monday, killing at least 19 people, mostly children, and injuring dozens, officials and witnesses said.
The Chinese-made F-7 BGI training aircraft crashed into the Milestone School and College campus in Dhaka’s Uttara area.
“The crash and the subsequent fire killed 19 people. At least 50 others were critically injured,” Brigadier General Zahed Kamal, Director General of Fire Service and Civil Defence, told reporters.
He said that rescuers have recovered 19 bodies from the school compound alone while the rescue operation was underway.
Earlier, Md Sayedur Rahman, special assistant to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus for the Health Ministry, said at least 16 people died following the crash of the aircraft into the Milestone School and College campus.
Rahman added that 72 people were hospitalised with burns and other types of injuries.
He said that wounded people, mostly students, were being treated at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Dhaka Medical College Hospital, and the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery (NIBPS).
According to doctors, eight of the injured were in critical condition.
“The number of injured people being brought to our facility is rising,” a doctor at NIBPS told reporters.
Rahman said the plane’s pilot, Flight Lieutenant Mohammad Towkir Islam, is being treated in the intensive care unit of the Combined Military Hospital.
In a statement, the defence ministry said that the F-7 BGI training aircraft took off at 1:06 pm and crashed into the college campus soon after.
The plane crashed with a big bang into a four-storey building of the Milestone School with a big bang and immediately caught fire, a fire service official said.
According to police, firefighting units, ambulances, and air force helicopters rushed to the scene soon after the crash.
A teacher of the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that security personnel were putting bodies in body bags to be taken to Dhaka’s combined military hospital from the damaged building, which housed classes from one to seven.
“Dozens of ambulances were carrying the wounded to nearby hospitals,,” she said.
The National Burn Institute in the capital said they were treating 18 people, mostly students, some with critical conditions.
The interim government has declared a one-day state mourning on July 22 when the national flag will be flown at half-mast across Bangladesh and its missions abroad.
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus expressed shock and sorrow over the casualties caused by the crash.
“I am deeply saddened by the casualties caused by the heartbreaking accident involving a Bangladesh Air Force jet at the Milestone School and College campus,” he said in a statement.
Fahim Hossain, an eleventh-grade student, said that the jet crashed right in front of his eyes – just 10 feet ahead of him.
“It hit the ground floor of a two-storey building around 1:15pm, where classes for the primary section were taking place,” Fahim told The Daily Star. (PTI)
