Hundreds of protesters have rallied in Bangladesh to demand accountability after an air force fighter jet crashed into a Dhaka school, killing 31 people, including 25 students.
The children, many aged under 12, were about to return home from class on Monday when the Bangladesh air force jet crashed into their school and burst into flames. The military said the plane had suffered mechanical failure.
Students from the school and others from nearby colleges protested as two government officials visited the crash site on Tuesday, demanding an accurate death toll and shouting, “Why did our brothers die? We demand answers!”
Elsewhere in the capital, hundreds of protesting students, some of them waving sticks, broke through the main gate of the federal government secretariat, demanding the resignation of the education adviser, according to local TV footage.
The protesting students called for those killed and injured to be named, compensation for families, the decommissioning of what they said were old and risky jets, and a change in air force training procedures.
Police fired tear gas and used sound grenades to disperse the crowd, leaving about 80 students injured, Jamuna TV, a Bangladeshi station, reported.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Talebur Rahman said he did not have information on the number of injured, the Reuters news agency reported.
The students have several demands, said Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, from the site of the crash at Milestone School and College.
“They’re asking the government to accurately list the name of the people who died and also those who are injured; they want an exact figure – the number of people who are in the hospital. They also want compensation and a public apology,” Chowdhury said.
“They also want the air force to get away from old aircraft and to change their training procedures.”
The military said in a statement that 31 people had died and 165 had been admitted to hospitals in the city. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said 68 remained in hospital, and the condition of 10 of them was critical.
A statement from the press office of Muhammad Yunus, the country’s interim administrator, said that the government, the military, school and hospital authorities were working together to publish a list of named victims.
It also said the air force will be told not to operate training aircraft in populated areas.
‘The nation is mourning’
Rescue workers continued to scour the charred buildings for debris on Tuesday as distressed residents of the area looked on.
“The whole nation is mourning. This is something [that’s] never happened in this country,” said Al Jazeera’s Chowdhury.
Some parents were inconsolable.
Abul Hossain broke down as he spoke about his nine-year-old daughter, Nusrat Jahan Anika, killed in the crash.
“I took her to school yesterday morning like every day. I had no idea it would be the last time I would be seeing her,” Hossain told Reuters. She was buried on Monday night.
Rubina Akter said her son Raiyan Toufiq had a miraculous escape after his shirt caught fire when he was on a staircase.
“He sprinted to the ground floor and jumped on the grass to douse it,” Akter told Reuters.
“He tore his shirt and vest inside, which saved him from severe burns.”
Smriti, an 11th-grade student at the school, told The Associated Press news agency that her eardrums felt they were “about to burst” when the plane crashed.
“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.
The jet had taken off from a nearby airbase on a routine training mission, the military said. After experiencing mechanical failure, the pilot tried to divert the aircraft away from populated areas, but it crashed into the school campus.
The pilot, flight lieutenant Mohammed Toukir Islam, was among those killed. It was his first solo flight as he was completing his training.
The incident comes as neighbour India is still grappling with the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade after an Air India plane crashed into a medical college hostel in Ahmedabad last month, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.