Mahreen Chowdhury, a teacher from the Milestone school in Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh, died on Monday at the hospital after saving several students from the flames, reports the BBC. The school had ignited after the fall of an air force fighter.
A dreadful shock
The fighter plane F-7, which had taken off from its base shortly after 1 pm for an exercise, would have undergone a mechanical failure before hitting a two-storey building near the school. The collision caused a fire that quickly spread.
Like every day, Mahreen Chowdhury stood in front of school to accompany the students’ exit when the shock occurred. While the flames began to take possession of the premises, the teacher realized that there were still children in classrooms. Without hesitation, she rushed to the rubble.
20 to 25 saved students
“I did my best to get around 20 to 25 children out,” she told her husband a few moments before being placed under an artificial respirator at the intensive care of the National Burk Institute in Dhaka. She died a few hours later.
According to our colleagues, the teacher had been seriously burned on almost all of her body. According to her husband, who confided in the BBC, she would also have told him before being placed in intensive care: “These children are also mine. »»
A day of national mourning
Mahreen Chowdhury, who has been taught in this establishment for seventeen years, is one of the 31 victims of this air crash which cost the life of 25 students as well as to the pilot of the plane. A total of 160 people were injured, most of whom were aged 10 to 15. Many were suffering from kerosene burns, said a doctor on duty at the Uttara Adhunik university hospital.
According to the Air Force, the pilot tried to direct his failed plane towards a less frequented area, without success. This is one of the deadliest air disasters that the country has known for several decades. A day of national mourning was decreed the day after the accident, the day when the heroic teacher was buried.
