Bangladesh’s fireplace service and safety personnel conduct a search and rescue operation after an Air Power coaching jet crashed into faculty in Dhaka on July 21, 2025. (Picture by Abdul Goni / AFP)
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A Bangladeshi fighter jet crashed into a college within the capital Dhaka on Monday, killing at the very least 20 folks and injuring greater than 170 within the nation’s deadliest aviation accident in many years.
Most of the victims had been younger college students who had simply been let loose of sophistication when a Chinese language-made F-7 BJI plane slammed into the Milestone College and Faculty.
READ: Bangladesh Air Power jet crashes into Dhaka faculty, at the very least 19 lifeless
An AFP photographer on the scene noticed fireplace and rescue officers taking away the injured college students on stretchers, whereas military personnel helped clear the mangled wreckage.
A army assertion stated 20 folks had been killed, together with the pilot, and 171 others injured when the jet crashed following a mechanical failure.
An 18-year-old scholar, Shafiur Rahman Shafi, stated he heard an enormous blast that felt like an earthquake.
“There have been two fighter planes… Abruptly one of many two planes crashed right here (within the junior playground),” he advised AFP.
“It created a growth, and it felt like a quake. Then it caught fireplace,” he added.
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The well-known personal faculty provides schooling to youngsters from kindergarten by means of to senior secondary.
A lot of the injured had been aged between eight and 14, stated Mohammad Maruf Islam, joint director of Dhaka’s Nationwide Burn and Plastic Surgical procedure Institute the place many victims had been handled.
Grieving family members of the victims thronged the hospital, whereas dozens of volunteers lined as much as donate blood.
Tofazzal Hossain, 30, broke down in tears on studying that his younger cousin had been killed.
“We frantically looked for my cousin in numerous hospitals,” Hossain advised AFP.
“He was an eighth grader on the faculty. Lastly, we discovered his physique.”
‘Deep grief and sorrow’
Mohammad Sayedur Rahman, a Well being and Household Welfare official, stated at the very least seven our bodies remained unidentified.
The army stated the pilot, flight lieutenant Towkir Islam, was on a routine coaching mission when the jet “reportedly encountered a mechanical failure”.
“The precise trigger stays underneath investigation,” it stated in an announcement.
The pilot tried to divert the plane away from densely populated areas however, “regardless of his finest efforts”, crashed into the two-storey faculty constructing, the army added.
It was Towkir’s first solo flight, his uncle Motakabbir advised AFP.
“His mom was nervous but glad and had been eagerly ready for the completion of her son’s first solo flight,” stated Motakabbir, who makes use of just one title.
Shuvra Ghosh, the aunt of one of many injured college students, stated her eight-year-old niece was rescued by a instructor who broke open a window to deliver her out.
“We’re mentally traumatised,” she advised AFP.
The interim authorities of Muhammad Yunus introduced a day of nationwide mourning on Tuesday.
Yunus expressed “deep grief and sorrow” over the incident in a publish on X.
“The loss suffered by the Air Power, the scholars, mother and father, lecturers, and workers of Milestone College and Faculty, in addition to others affected by this accident, is irreparable,” he stated.
“It is a second of profound ache for the nation.”
The crash was the worst aviation accident within the nation in a number of many years.
The deadliest ever catastrophe occurred in 1984 when a aircraft flying from Chattogram to Dhaka crashed, killing all 49 on board.
Final month, a business plane crashed in neighbouring India, killing 260 folks.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated he was “deeply shocked and saddened on the lack of lives” in Dhaka.
Relations between the neighbours have been strained since protesters in Bangladesh final yr ousted chief Sheikh Hasina, an previous ally of New Delhi.
“India stands in solidarity with Bangladesh and is able to prolong all doable assist and help,” Modi wrote on X.
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