Hundreds of students protested near the site of the crash of a Bangladesh air force training jet into a school in the nation’s capital, demanding accountability, compensation for victims’ families and the halt of training flights.
The death toll from the crash rose to 31 on Tuesday, including 25 students, a teacher who died from burn injuries she sustained while helping others get out of the burning building, and the pilot of the training aircraft.
Firefighters further secured the scene of the crash in Dhaka’s densely populated Uttara neighbourhood while an investigation by the military was ongoing. The country’s civil aviation authority was not involved in the investigation directly.
Bangladesh marked Tuesday as a national day of mourning, with the national flag flying at half-staff across the country.
The crash at the Milestone School and College in Dhaka caused a fire that left the two-storey school building in flames. Officials said 171 people, mostly students and many with burns, were rescued and taken from the scene in helicopters, ambulances, motorized rickshaws and in the arms of firefighters and parents.
The students protesting outside the crash site demanded “accurate” publication of identities of the dead and injured, compensation for the families, and an immediate halt to the use of “outdated and unsafe” training aircraft by the Bangladesh air force.
They chanted slogans and accused security officials of beating them and manhandling teachers on Monday.
The students also became furious after two senior government advisers arrived at the scene, forcing the officials to take cover.
On Tuesday, 78 people, mostly students, remained hospitalized, said Sayeedur Rahman, a special assistant to Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus.
Doctors said late Monday that the condition of about two dozen injured remained critical. A blood donation camp has been opened at a specialized burn hospital where most of the injured were being treated.
Twenty bodies have been handed over to their families, with some of them possibly needing DNA matching after they were charred beyond recognition. Many relatives waited overnight at a specialized burn hospital for the bodies of their loved ones.
Maherin Chowdhury, a teacher who rescued more than 20 students from the burning school, died from severe burn injuries, her colleague Tanzina Tanu said.
Pilot’s first solo flight
The Chinese-made F-7 BGI training aircraft experienced a “technical malfunction” moments after takeoff from the A.K. Khandaker air force base at 1:06 p.m. Monday, according to a statement from the military.
The pilot, Flight Lt. Mohammed Toukir Islam, made “every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas toward a more sparsely inhabited location,” the military said, adding that it would investigate the cause of the crash.
The Milestone school, about an 11-kilometre drive from the air force base, is in a densely populated area near a metro station and numerous shops and homes. It was the pilot’s first solo flight as he was completing his training course. It remained unclear if he managed to eject before the jet hit the building.
The first funeral prayers were held for the pilot in Dhaka on Tuesday morning and second prayers will be held in southwestern Rajshahi district where his parents live.
It is the deadliest plane crash in the Bangladeshi capital in recent memory. In 2008, another F-7 training jet crashed outside Dhaka, killing its pilot, who had ejected after he discovered a technical problem.