An Air Force Hunter in Bangladesh who was carrying out a training flight crashed on a school in Dacca on Monday, causing the death of at least 19 people, including many schoolchildren, according to a first official assessment. This air disaster has been the deadliest in Bangladesh for decades.
The fall of the Milestone school campus, in the northwest of the Bangladaise capital, also made more than 100 injured mostly schoolchildren aged 8 to 12, the provisional government said. At least 83 of them were hospitalized, most of them in serious condition, according to the same source.
The pilot died of his injuries
A total of 51 victims was led by the National Institute of Gallows Brown, where they were treated for serious burns, its director told AFP, Dr Mohammad Nasir Uddin. Many parents of students crowded in this hospital to try to identify their loved ones, noted an AFP journalist.
The plane involved is an F-7 BGI type single-engine system, of Chinese manufacturing, which had taken off at 1:06 p.m. local (7:06 GMT), added the executive press service. His pilot, identified under the name of Toukir Islam Sagar, died of his injuries, said the press service of the military staff (ISPR). He would have attempted as much as possible to keep his machine away from the inhabited areas of the capital.
“There were two fighter planes (in the sky), one fell here on the part (of the building) where an English course was held for primary students,” a student testified to AFP, Shafiur Rahman Shafi, 18. “Many young students and teachers were injured,” added the young man, who was in one of the school playgrounds at the time of the accident.
“Big boom”
“It made a big boom. We felt a shock like an earthquake. And then everything caught fire, “he said. The emergency services were deployed on the scene, where they continued to extract the victims from the rubble from the building affected on civilians, noted an AFP photographer present on the scene.
The provisional head of government, the Nobel Peace Prize in Muhammad Yunus, expressed “his deep sorrow and his sentence”. “It’s a moment of deep pain for the whole nation,” he added. “The government will take all the necessary measures to investigate the origin of the accident and assist everyone.”
The authorities decreed a national mourning day across the country on Tuesday. In 1984, a Fokker F-27 from the Biman company connecting the port of Chittagong (southwest) to Dhaka crashed, caused the death of the 49 passengers and crew members on board.
