Grief, angst continues as toll in jet crash on school rises to 32 in Bangladesh

Dhaka: Grief and angst continued to grip Bangladesh on Wednesday, two days after a jet crashed on a school building as the death toll climbed to 32 with most victims being children.

The F-7 BGI aircraft, a training fighter jet manufactured in China, experienced a “mechanical fault” moments after takeoff and crashed into a two-storey building of Milestone School and College in Dhaka's Uttara area on Monday.

Thousands of students on Tuesday protested in Dhaka demanding “accurate” information on casualties and compensation for the families of those killed in the Bangladesh Air Force training jet crash into the school.

On Wednesday, as scores of others with burn wounds continued fighting for lives at different hospitals in the capital, authorities of the Milestone School, on which the jet had crashed, formed their own committee to ascertain the accurate death toll and number of their wounded students and teachers.

Doctors said a nine-year-old boy, identified only as Nafi, succumbed to his wounds overnight at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery (NIBPS) raising the toll to 32 in the crash.

“He survived for two days sustaining 95 per cent burns and breathed his last shortly after midnight,” NIBPS surgeon Shawon Bin Rahman told reporters.

Several more people who received severe critical burn wounds are being treated at the hospital, he said.

According to media reports at least 69 people, mostly underage and teenage children, are receiving treatment at different government and private health facilities, including at Dhaka’s combined military hospital (CMH).

Meanwhile, after daylong student protests on Tuesday where they claimed the interim government of Muhammad Yunus was concealing the actual casualty figures, Milestone School authorities on Wednesday formed a committee to find the accurate death toll and number of their wounded students and teachers.

“Many students, teachers, staff, and guardians were affected by the incident. Many were injured and some lost their lives. The committee is formed in order to determine the actual number of dead, injured, and missing, and to prepare a list with their names and addresses,” the school said in a notice.

Principal Mohammad Ziaul Alam is to chair the committee, which, the school said, would submit its report in the next three days.

The Bangladesh Air Force has already formed a high-level investigation committee to determine the cause of the accident.

Earlier on Tuesday, hundreds of students of the Milestone School and College, as well as from nearby schools, protested, demanding the “accurate” disclosure of the information about those killed, compensation for victims' families and the immediate discontinuation of outdated and unsafe training aircraft used by the Bangladesh Air Force.

The crash was one of the deadliest in Bangladesh’s history.

In the last such aviation tragedy in 1984, a total of 49 people were killed when a passenger jet crashed as it attempted to land during a severe rainstorm at the Dhaka airport.