At least 19 people were killed and 164 injured as a Bangladesh air force training jet crashed into a college and school campus in the capital Dhaka yesterday after experiencing a technical problem shortly after take-off, a military spokesperson said.
The F-7 BGI jet took off from the Bangladesh Air Force base in Kurmitola, Dhaka, as part of a routine training mission, but encountered a mechanical failure, said the spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Sami Ud Dowla Chowdhury.
“The pilot ... made a valiant attempt to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas. Despite his best efforts, the aircraft ... crashed into a two-storey building belonging to Milestone School and College,” he said.
The pilot was among those killed in the incident, the military said, adding that a committee had been formed to investigate its cause.
The incident comes a little over a month after an Air India plane crashed on top of a medical college hostel in neighbouring India’s Ahmedabad city, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 on the ground, marking the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
&uuid=(email))