Bangladesh was observing a day of national mourning Tuesday as the death toll from a military jet crash on a school compound climbed to 31 and hundreds of students rallied near the crash site demanding accountability.
Firefighters further secured the site in Dhaka’s densely populated Uttara neighborhood while the military launched an investigation. The country’s civil aviation authority was not directly involved in the investigation.
Monday’s crash at the Milestone School and College caused a fire that gutted the two-story school building. Officials said 171 people, mostly students and many with burns, were rescued and carried away in helicopters, ambulances, motorized rickshaws and in the arms of firefighters and parents.
The protesting students demanded "accurate" publication of identities of the dead and injured, compensation for their families and an immediate halt to the use of "outdated and unsafe" training aircraft by the Bangladesh air force.
They chanted slogans and accused security officials of beating them and manhandling teachers on Monday.
The students became furious after two senior government advisers arrived at the scene, forcing them to take cover for six hours inside the school campus before additional security forces arrived and escorted them out.
Elsewhere in Dhaka, scores of students were injured after police charged them with batons. The students earlier broke through security barricades and entered the Bangladesh Secretariat complex, the country’s administrative headquarters, and security officials used stun grenades and tear gas to disperse them.
They demanded the resignation of the education adviser who, they said, delayed announcing that public exams were being canceled during Tuesday’s mourning.
"Yesterday, when the plane was approaching, the sound was so loud you can’t even imagine – it felt like eardrums were about to burst. Within five seconds, the plane crashed right in front of me here," Smriti, a student who only gave one name, said outside her school.
"Suddenly, I saw flames rising fiercely upward from the building," the 11th grader said. "When I got here, I saw some children lying with their limbs spread out, some of their lifeless bodies scattered around. Can you save them? Tell me, will they ever be able to return to their parents’ arms again," she asked.
On Tuesday, 78 people, mostly students, remained hospitalized, said Sayeedur Rahman, a special assistant to Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus.
Twenty deaths were reported initially and seven died of their injuries overnight, authorities said. Another four deaths were reported later Monday, the military said.
Maherin Chowdhury, a teacher who rescued more than 20 students from the burning school, died from severe burn injuries, her colleague Tanzina Tanu said.
Doctors said late Monday that the condition of about two dozen injured remained critical. A blood donation camp has been opened at a specialized burn hospital where most of the injured were being treated.
Twenty bodies have been handed over to their families, with some of them possibly needing DNA matching after they were charred beyond recognition. Many relatives waited overnight at a specialized burn hospital for the bodies of their loved ones.
The Chinese-made F-7 BGI training aircraft experienced a "technical malfunction" moments after takeoff from the A.K. Khandaker air force base at 1:06 p.m. Monday, according to a statement from the military.
The pilot, Flight Lt. Mohammed Toukir Islam, made "every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas toward a more sparsely inhabited location," the military said, adding that it would investigate the cause of the crash.
The Milestone school, about an 11-kilometer (7-mile) drive from the air force base, is in a densely populated area near a metro station and numerous shops and homes.
It was the pilot’s first solo flight as he was completing his training course. It remained unclear if he managed to eject before the jet hit the building.
The first funeral prayers were held for the pilot in Dhaka on Tuesday morning and second prayers will be held in southwestern Rajshahi district where his parents live.
It is the deadliest plane crash in the Bangladeshi capital in recent memory. In 2008, another F-7 training jet crashed outside Dhaka, killing its pilot, who had ejected after he discovered a technical problem.
