Bangladesh marks grim anniversary of school jet crash as families demand accountability

A year has passed since the morning a Bangladeshi military training jet fell from the sky and tore through Milestone School in Dhaka, killing 36 people—most of them children. On a normal Tuesday in July 2025, around 1 p.m. local time, the aircraft took off from an air force base in the capital and crashed minutes later in the Uttara neighborhood. What had been a functioning school, full of the ordinary noise of sixth graders and their teachers, became rubble and flame within moments. It was the deadliest aviation disaster Bangladesh had experienced in decades.

Nure Jannat Yusha was a sixth-grade student that day. A year later, she still cannot sleep. When planes pass overhead, her body tightens with fear. In her dreams, she is falling into fire. Her mother, Yasin Akter, watches her daughter struggle to concentrate on schoolwork, watches the dancer her child once wanted to become fade into someone else entirely. "My daughter screams all day and is afraid," Akter said. "Earlier she was interested in studies. Now she does not want to study any more." Yusha was among more than 160 people injured in the crash. She was also among the survivors who gathered this week at a hospital in Dhaka to mark the anniversary—not to commemorate, but to demand answers.

The investigation into what happened took months. A commission formed by authorities examined the wreckage, interviewed witnesses, and compiled findings that were submitted to the government in November. But the full report has never been released to the public. What emerged, however, through a copy obtained by BBC Bengali, painted a picture of cascading failures. The pilot, investigators found, had not received sufficient flight training and lacked proper ground supervision. The aircraft itself had no mechanical fault—contradicting an initial statement from the Bangladesh Armed Forces that blamed engine trouble. Instead, the blame fell elsewhere: on a school that violated building codes, on a city that had allowed more than 600 structures—schools, hospitals, residential buildings—to be constructed too close to the airport and in violation of height restrictions. The school where the jet came down had only one door for 800 to 900 students.

Mansur Helal stood before the gathered families and survivors at the memorial and spoke about his wife, Mahreen Chowdhury, a schoolteacher who died in the hospital from severe burns she suffered while pulling students to safety. "No one can give a guarantee that another plane will not fall onto this school in the future," he said. "This is truly a horrific situation. Every day around 2,500 to 3,000 students go to that school." His words hung in the air—not a question, but an indictment. The families are calling for the government to release the full investigation report. They are demanding better medical support for survivors still undergoing treatment, and compensation that was recommended by the investigative committee but has not yet been paid.

Mehreen, a fifth-grader, no longer attends school. Her burns are severe enough that even brief exposure to sunlight causes her entire body to burn. She has lost the ability to memorize—what once took two minutes now takes two hours, if it happens at all. Her sleep is fractured by nightmares she cannot name. "I still can't forget that incident," she said. Health Minister Sardar Sakhawat Hossain, present at the memorial, promised government support for survivors requiring further medical care. The Prime Minister's wife, Zubaida Rahman, called the survivors' courage "a source of inspiration for the nation." But words and promises are not the same as the full report being made public, or compensation being distributed, or a guarantee that the structural failures that allowed this to happen have been fixed. The families know this. The survivors know this. A year later, they are still waiting.