A Bangladesh air force training aircraft has crashed into a college and school campus in the capital, Dhaka, killing at least 31 people, including the pilot, according to the military.
The F-7 BGI aircraft crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College in Dhaka’s Uttara neighbourhood at about 1pm (07:00 GMT) on Monday, when students were taking tests or attending regular classes.
The pilot, flight lieutenant Mohammed Toukir Islam, made “every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas towards a more sparsely inhabited location”, the military said, adding that it would investigate the cause of the crash. It said on Monday that 171 people were injured in the incident. Several of the injured succumbed to their injuries overnight on Tuesday.
Most of the injured were aged between eight and 14, said Mohammad Maruf Islam, the joint director of Dhaka’s National Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute, where many victims were treated.
Sayedur Rahman, the special assistant to the chief adviser for the Ministry of Health, told reporters early on Tuesday that at least 25 children were among those killed in the crash.
Videos of the aftermath of the crash showed a big fire near a lawn emitting a thick plume of smoke into the sky, as crowds watched from a distance.
Firefighters sprayed water on the mangled remains of the plane, which appeared to have rammed into the side of a building, damaging iron grills and creating a gaping hole in the structure.
Social media videos showed people screaming and crying as others tried to comfort them.
“When I was picking [up] my kids and went to the gate, I realised something came from behind … I heard an explosion. When I looked back, I only saw fire and smoke,” Masud Tarik, a teacher at the school, told the Reuters news agency.
Reporting from Dhaka, Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury said search and rescue operations appeared to be coming to an end.
“Many of the victims are in severe condition in burn hospitals and other local hospitals,” Chowdhury said.
The interim government of Muhammad Yunus announced a day of national mourning on Tuesday.
Yunus expressed “deep grief and sorrow” over the incident in a post on X.
“The loss suffered by the air force … students, parents, teachers and staff, and others in this accident is irreparable,” he said.
Yunus also announced that an emergency hotline has been activated at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in the wake of the crash.
The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society called for donations for those injured.
The incident came a little more than a month after an Air India plane crashed into a medical college hostel in neighbouring India’s Ahmedabad city, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 on the ground, the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
