They are my children too,” Mahreen Chowdhury said to her husband as she died in the hospital. Earlier, hours only, the teacher was waiting at the door of Milestone School and College in the capital city of Bangladesh, Dhaka, about to hand the second- to fifth-grade students over to their parents.
But within a flash, the ordinary Monday lunch hour became a nightmare. A Bangladesh Air Force jet fighter exploded into flames after crashing into a two-story building. Chowdhury – realising there were students left in the classrooms of the blazing building – dashed back inside.
“I did the best I could get 20 to 25 people out – as many as I could,” Chowdhury’s husband, Mansur Helal, remembers her telling him, before she was placed on a ventilator in the intensive care unit at Dhaka’s National Burn Institute. “I don’t know what happened after that. Chowdhury succumbed later in the day on Monday: while rescuing the children, she had also sustained burns to nearly 100% of her body.
Bangladesh’s military reported that the F7 fighter jet had suffered a mechanical failure after it took off for a training mission shortly after 13:00 local time (07:00 GMT) on Monday, and that the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Md. Taukir Islam had attempted to direct it into less busy airspace. He was one of the victims. The accident is the worst aviation tragedy the nation has experienced in decades.
Over 160 were injured, with an on-duty physician at the Uttara Adhunik Medical College Hospital reporting that they were aged between 10 and 15 years, with many having jet fuel burns. Over 50 children and adults were brought to the hospital with burns, according to a doctor at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery.
Mr Helal informed BBC Bangla that he first phoned his wife upon receiving the news of the plane crash. Since she didn’t pick up, he sent his eldest son to the school to inquire about what had happened.
Shortly afterwards, he was called by an ambulance driver informing him that his wife was being rushed to the burns unit at Uttara Modern Medical Hospital. She would subsequently be admitted to the ICU.
Mr Helal said Chowdhury apologised to him on her hospital bed, just before she was put on ventilation. Recalling their last moments together, he cried. She was alive. She uttered the highest words with a strong mind.” Since nearly its hundred per cent inner and outer burn,” he mentioned.
Chowdhury spent 17 years working at Milestone School and College, initially joining as a teacher before being elevated to serve as a coordinator in the Bangla department for classes two to five.
She was laid to rest on Tuesday in her native district of Nilphamari, in northern Bangladesh, where flags were lowered at half mast around the nation yesterday in a day of national mourning for the dead. Muhammad Yunus, head of the interim government of Bangladesh, said an investigation committee has been established to investigate the accident.
Hundreds of protesters outside Dhaka on Tuesday demanded an actual death toll and the resignation of the education adviser – many crossing the central gate of the federal government secretariat, local TV footage showed.
Police used tear gas and sound grenades to drive out the protesters, injuring dozens of people, witnesses added. The demonstrators demanded that victims of the crash be identified, compensation for victims’ families be paid, old and hazardous jets be decommissioned, and air force training methodology changes.
The Bangladesh air tragedy follows closely on the heels of neighbouring India experiencing the worst aviation crash in a decade. An Air India passenger jet heading to London’s Gatwick airport crashed just moments after departure in Ahmedabad, western India, on 12 June, killing 260. The crash destroyed 242 lives on the plane and 19 on the ground, with a lone survivor on the flight.
