\n An ordinary school day turned into terror on Monday when a Bangladesh Air Force jet suffered a mid-air mechanical fault and ploughed into the Milestone School and College in Dhaka, engulfing the two-story building in flames and smoke.\n <\/p>\n
\n Young students were finishing up afternoon classes and parents had gathered outside the gates to greet their children when the aircraft hit, killing at least 31 people – including 25 children – in the country\u2019s deadliest air incident in recent memory. Some 165 others were left injured, according to the armed forces public relations directorate (ISPR), many with severe burns.\n <\/p>\n
\n That most of the dead and injured are young children has compounded the tragedy that shocked the nation of 171 million people and sent the country into national mourning.\n <\/p>\n
\n As police and air force personnel worked at the scene to retrieve parts of the crashed plane on Tuesday, the gathered crowd began shouting at officials, with some students telling CNN they believe the death toll may be higher than <\/strong>officially released.\n <\/p>\n \n The government has denied it is withholding information about the casualties of the crash, state media BSS News reported, citing the Chief Adviser\u2019s press wing. It added that the identities of those killed are still being verified.\n <\/p>\n \n At the crash site on Tuesday, witnesses were still visibly shaken by the horror they had seen the day before.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe saw scattered parts of different bodies, of children, guardians,\u201d Mohammad Imran Hussein, a lecturer in the school\u2019s English department, told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI cannot express everything in words,\u201d he said, emotionally distressed and struggling to speak.\n <\/p>\n \n Hussein said he was in a school building across the playground when the jet crashed.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe sound was really intolerable. And I looked around to see what happened, I saw the tail of the plane. I saw a huge flame of fire,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Milestone College has a kindergarten, an elementary school and a high school on its campus. The building destroyed in the crash was one of about 20 housing almost 100 students between the ages of six and 13, Hussein said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s like this building was turned into a death trap. It was horrible, totally horrible,\u201d said Sheik Rameen, 21, a student at the high school.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI saw a lot of children, I tried to save their lives,\u201d he told CNN at the site. \u201cI saw a burnt child seek help but nobody came to help them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The FT-7 jet was on a routine training mission when it crashed soon after take off at around 1:18 p.m. local time on Monday (3:18 a.m. EST) after a mechanical fault, according to BSS News, citing the country\u2019s armed forces.\n <\/p>\n \n The plane\u2019s pilot, who has been named as Flight Lieutenant Towkir Islam, made \u201cevery effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas toward a more sparsely inhabited location,\u201d the military said.\n <\/p>\n \n The F-7 \u202fBGI is the final and most advanced variant in China\u2019s Chengdu J-7\/F-7 aircraft family, according to Jane\u2019s Information Group. Reuters reported that Bangladesh signed a contract for 16 aircraft in 2011 and deliveries were completed by 2013.\n <\/p>\n \n Images from the crash site showed parts of the mangled wreckage of the jet lodged into the side of the scorched school as emergency crews continued their operations.\n <\/p>\n \n Following the crash, emergency crews and families rushed the injured to hospitals in the capital where doctors raced to treat severe burns caused by the inferno. The hospitals quickly became overwhelmed with frantic relatives desperate for news of their loved ones.\n <\/p>\n \n Most of the injured at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital\u2019s burns unit are children under the age of 12, resident surgeon Harunur Rashid told Reuters.\n <\/p>\n \n Video shows crowds waiting outside the hospital and waiting rooms packed with anxious families.\n <\/p>\n \n Bangladesh\u2019s interim government leader Muhammad Yunus said on Monday that, \u201cI have no words. I don\u2019t know how to begin.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNone of us ever imagined it. It wasn\u2019t within anyone\u2019s expectations. But we had to suddenly accept this unbelievable reality,\u201d Yunus said in a video message.\n <\/p>\n \n Yunus said the training aircraft \u201ccrashed and fell upon these innocent children\u201d and many were \u201cburned to death in the fire.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat answer can we give to their parents? What can we possibly say to them? We can\u2019t even answer ourselves,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dhaka, Bangladesh CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Hundreds of students gathered outside the smoldering remains of a school in the Bangladeshi…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":83210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-83209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114896988072875321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shahbul,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ap25202436863761.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Students](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/img-5029.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Firemen](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ap25202362849576.jpg\")
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