Bangladesh Mourns After Deadly Plane Crash During School Lunch Break

Asia Pacific|Children Were on Their School Lunch Break. Then a Plane Hit.

The third- and fourth-grade schoolchildren were settling into a typical lunch break in their classrooms on Monday when the plane crashed into their building.

A fighter jet had suddenly flipped in midair moments before it slammed into the two-story building, said Abu Sayed Mohammad Waliullah, a teacher at the school in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, who had been chatting with other teachers outside. The plane exploded with a bang so loud it sounded like a bomb had gone off, he said.

“My mind went blank. I couldn’t understand what had just happened,” Mr. Waliullah said. Then, after what seemed like 10 seconds, he heard another blast as the plane’s jet fuel ignited.

“This time, it created a big, big fire,” Mr. Waliullah recalled. “I saw at least two students flung away by the force.”

Some 78 people, many of whom are in critical condition, were receiving treatment across various hospitals, Sayedur Rahman, a special assistant to Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, said on Tuesday morning. The bodies of 20 victims had been handed over to their families, he added.

The fighter jet — a Chinese-built F-7 BGI — had taken off 12 minutes earlier from a military air base less than two miles from the school. Officials said a mechanical failure caused the accident and promised to share more details after an investigation.

Bangladesh, the most densely populated country on earth, barring a few tiny island territories, declared a day of mourning.

Mahathir Mohammed Abid, a 12th grader, had been at the cafeteria, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the crash site at the school, in an area called Uttara, north of the city’s international airport and a military air base.

Back on the campus on Tuesday morning, he showed his hands, wrapped in bandages covering the burns he suffered while trying to rescue younger students.

He said he ran around the wrecked aircraft to enter the burning building.

“I recovered the body of a young student with my own hands,” Mr. Abid, 18, said. “He had been burned alive.”

Such was the shock, Mr. Abid said, that he vomited after handling the body.

Other students also gathered outside the school on Tuesday, some of them crying out in anguish, convinced that even more people had been killed.

Mr. Waliullah said the main campus of the Milestone School serves about 10,000 students, who take classes in both English and Bangla. Had the crash happened just 10 minutes earlier, he said, even more students would have been in their classrooms. During the lunch break, at least some of them had gone outdoors to play or to eat at the school cafeteria.

Sagor Hossain came to the scene to look for his 8-year-old niece, Raisa Moni. All he found was a scorched pink school bag and books that belonged to her.

He walked around the campus holding the bag up to journalists and their cameras. Her name was clearly visible on one soaked notebook: “Raisa Moni,” and her grade, “Three.”

“We want to know about what happened to her, if she is alive or dead or wounded,” said Mr. Sagor, a lab attendant at a university. Her parents had fallen ill after searching hospitals all night, he said. “Where should I go now?”

Maruf Hasan contributed reporting from Dhaka.