‘It felt like an earthquake’: Students recount horror after fighter jet hits Dhaka school

Dhaka, Bangladesh: A sunny Monday afternoon turned into a scene of horror and heartbreak as a Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College in Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood, leaving at least 19 people dead and more than 160 injured.

Among the dead is the pilot of the F-7 BGI jet, a Chinese-made aircraft used for training purposes. But heartbreak pierced deeper through the community as students were caught in the tragedy — many of them in the middle of their afternoon classes.

For Shafiur Rahman Shafi, 18, the explosion was like nothing he had ever heard before.

“We were on the senior students’ playground,” he told AFP. “There were two fighter planes flying. Suddenly, one of them crashed into the junior playground. It created a boom — it felt like a quake. Then it caught fire.”

Within seconds, black smoke rose above the school’s brightly painted buildings. Screams filled the air as students and staff ran for safety. The aircraft had barely taken off from an air base when it lost control and plummeted into the school grounds.

Officials are still investigating the cause of the crash.

Grieving families rushed to the National Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute, hoping — praying — that their loved ones had survived.

Tofazzal Hossain, 30, was one of them. His 13-year-old cousin, a student in eighth grade, hadn’t come home.

“We frantically searched for my cousin in different hospitals,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Finally, we found his body.”

It was a moment of unspeakable grief — one echoed by dozens of other families.

Milestone School and College, home to more than 2,000 students, had always taken pride in offering more than academics — it promised “global opportunities” and a strong emphasis on extracurricular growth.

But now, its classrooms are empty. Its halls, once filled with the sound of laughter and learning, echo with silence and loss.

The interim government declared a national day of mourning for Tuesday. Nobel laureate and interim Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus called the incident a moment of “profound pain for the nation.”

“The loss suffered by the Air Force, the students, parents, teachers, and staff of Milestone School and College is irreparable,” he said in a statement on social media.

This is the deadliest air disaster in Dhaka in recent memory. The country’s last worst aviation tragedy occurred in 1984, when a domestic flight crashed, killing all 49 onboard.

The shock comes just weeks after a commercial airline crash in India claimed 260 lives, rattling nerves across South Asia.

As investigators sift through debris, and families bury their children, questions hang in the air: Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented?