Dhaka, Bangladesh
CNN
–
Hundreds of students gathered outside the smoldering bodies of a school in Bangladesh’s capital on Tuesday, demanding answers after a military jet hit the campus and killed dozens of children.
Ordinary school day became terrifying on Monday, when Bangladeshi Air Force jets suffered mechanical failures in the air, plowing into Dhaka’s milestone school and university, and swallowing a two-storey building of flames and smoke.
The young student was finishing afternoon classes, and parents gathered outside the gate to welcome their children when the aircraft collided, killing at least 31 people (including 25 children) in the country’s most fatal air incident in memory recently. According to the Military Public Relations Office (ISPR), 165 other people were left injured, many suffering severe burns.
The fact that most of the dead and injured are young children shocked a nation of 171 million and exacerbated the tragedy that put the nation in the mourning of its citizens.
The crowd assembled began screaming at officials as police and Air Force officials worked at the scene to retrieve some of the plane that crashed on Tuesday. It has been officially released.
The government has denied withholding information about the victims of the crash, the news from the national media BSS reported, citing the chief advisor’s news agency. It added that the identities of those killed are still being verified.
At the crash site on Tuesday, witnesses were still visibly shaken by the fear they saw the previous day.
“We saw the scattered parts of the different bodies of children, parents,” Mohammad Imran Hussein, a lecturer in the school’s English department, told CNN.
“I can’t put everything into words,” he said.
Hussein said he was in the school building across the playground when the jet crashed.
“The sound really couldn’t stand it. And I looked around to see what had happened, looked at the tail of the plane. I saw a huge flame of fire,” he said.
Milestone College has kindergarten, elementary school and high school on campus. The building that was destroyed in the crash was one of about 20 homes, with around 100 students between the ages of 6 and 13, Hussein said.
“This building is like a deadly trap. It was horrifying and totally terrifying,” said 21-year-old Sheikh Rameen, a high school student.
“I saw a lot of kids, I tried to save their lives,” he told CNN on the site. “I saw a burned child asking for help, but no one came to help them.”
According to BSS news, the FT-7 jet was on a regular training mission when it crashed shortly after taking off at local time (EST) local time (3:18am) after mechanical negligence.
The pilot of the plane appointed Li in flight was appointed as A. Toukiru Islam and “made every effort to divert the aircraft from densely populated areas to more sparsely populated areas,” the military said.
According to Jane’s information group, the F-7 BGI is the ultimate and most advanced variant of China’s Chengdu J-7/F-7 aircraft family. Reuters reported that Bangladesh signed a contract for 16 aircraft in 2011 and delivery was completed by 2013.
Images of the crash site showed some of the remains of the jets that remained on the side of the burnt school as the emergency crew continued their operations.
After the crash, emergency crews and families rushed the injured to a hospital in the capital where doctors competed to treat severe burns caused by Inferno. The hospital was quickly overwhelmed by her desperate relatives, desperate to find the news of their loved ones.
Most of the injured people in the Burns unit at Dhaka Medical University Hospital are children under the age of 12, resident Harnour Rashid told Reuters.
In the video, there is a waiting room packed with crowds waiting outside the hospital and anxious families.
Bangladesh’s interim government leader Muhammad Yunus said on Monday, “I have no words. I don’t know how to start.”
“None of us imagined it. It was nowhere near anyone’s expectations, but we had to suddenly accept this incredible reality,” Yunus said in a video message.
Yunus said the trainer “crashed and fell on these innocent children,” and many said they “remained burns in the fire.”
“What answers can we give to our parents? What can we say to them? We can’t even answer ourselves,” he said.
