Dhaka, 22 July

The death toll from the crash of the Bangladesh Air Force training fighter jet into a school building in Dhaka rose to 27 as more people succumbed to their injuries, authorities said on Tuesday.

The F-7 BGI aircraft, a training fighter jet manufactured in China, experienced a "mechanical fault" moments after takeoff and crashed into the two-storey building of Milestone School and College at Diabari in Dhaka's Uttara area on Monday.

“The toll is now 27, and 25 of them are children,” Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus’s special adviser, Saidur Rahman, told reporters.

He said many of the dead were under the age of 12. Twenty bodies have been handed over to their families so far.

Authorities fear the toll could rise.

"We are continuing all possible efforts to provide medical care. However, the condition of some patients remains extremely critical," Rahman said at the specialised National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery (NIBPS) in the capital.

About 170 people were injured in the crash.

Wails of despair and pain reverberate at hospitals where patients were treated with burn injuries.

The school authorities and hospital staff said several guardians were still frantically looking for their missing children, running from one hospital to another.

“Dozens of ambulances were carrying the wounded to nearby hospitals, but the number is so high the facilities could not admit and treat them properly due to lack of rooms for burn injuries,” a school teacher said.

Anxious parents and relatives waited outside the emergency wards with shock, uncertainty, fear and grief.

The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Mohammad Towkir Islam, was among those killed in the crash.

The government has declared a state day of mourning for Tuesday in memory of those affected by the crash.

A statement from the Chief Advisor's Office on Monday announced that the national flag will be flown at half-mast at all government, semi-government, autonomous institutions and educational institutions across the country.

Special prayers will be organised at all places of religious worship in the country for the injured and the dead.

A high-level investigation committee has been formed by the Bangladesh Air Force to determine the cause of the accident.

The defence ministry’s Inter Service Public Relations Directorate (ISPR) in its last statement on Monday said pilot Hossain tried his best to fly the craft to a desolate place to evade any major casualty but failed.

“All the wounded people are being quickly transferred to Combined Military Hospital (CMH) and other nearby facilities with the help of air force helicopter and ambulances for treatment,” the ISPR said.

The crash was one of the deadliest in Bangladesh’s history.

In the last such aviation tragedy in 1984, a total of 49 people were killed when a passenger jet crashed as it attempted to land during a severe rainstorm at the Dhaka airport.