Bangladesh Plane Crash: What We Know About F-7 BGI Training Jets
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
A Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into a school in the country's capital city of Dhaka on Monday, killing at least 20 people.
More than 170 people were injured as the F-7 BGI training jet crashed into the Milestone School and College, in the city's northern Uttara neighborhood.
The pilot, named as Flight Lieutenant Md. Toukir Islam, was among those killed as the plane hit a two-storey building, said the country's military in a statement.
The jet had taken off from Dhaka's AK Khandker Air Force Base for a training flight shortly after 1 p.m. local time, but crashed minutes later due to a mechanical fault, said the statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate (ISPR). The pilot had attempted to steer the aircraft away from densely populated areas, it added.
Members of the Bangladesh Army and the fire service start rescue operations after a Bangladesh Air Force F7 aircraft crashed into a building of Milestone College in Dhaka's Uttara around 1:30 pm on July...
Members of the Bangladesh Army and the fire service start rescue operations after a Bangladesh Air Force F7 aircraft crashed into a building of Milestone College in Dhaka's Uttara around 1:30 pm on July 21, 2025 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. More
Abdul Goni/Drik/Getty Images
Muhammad Yunus, the leader of the country's interim government, offered his "deep condolences" over the "tragic accident", adding in a social media post that the cause of the crash would be investigated.
The F-7 BGI is an upgraded version of the F-7, an iteration of the Chinese-designed J-7 itself modeled on the aged, Soviet-era MiG-21.
"It's a relatively new version of a very old plane," said Jacob Parakilas, research leader for Defense Strategy, Policy and Capabilities at the European branch of the RAND think tank.
The last F-7 BGI came off the line in 2013, Parakilas told Newsweek. The F-7 was designed as an interceptor aircraft, "which in general means that it's optimized for high speed flight," Parakilas said. But take-off and landing can be "less forgiving" than for aircraft with larger wings, he added.
"The fact that the base model is old doesn't inherently make it unsafe," Parakilas added.
As of early 2025, Bangladesh had 87 combat-capable aircraft, including several variants of the F-7 fighters, according to the U.K.-based defense think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
The country's air force had 12 F-7 BGI jets, as well as 11 F-7 BGs and 7 F-7 MB aircraft, according to the IISS. Bangladesh also operates a handful of Soviet-era MiG-29 aircraft.
Dhaka's military has close ties with China, and has carried out joint exercises with Beijing.
The IISS, in the 2025 edition of its annual review of the world's armed forces, said Bangladesh had plans to boost its combat aircraft fleet, and had invested in its fixed-wing training aircraft.
Dhaka's "limited military capability is focused on border and domestic security," the think tank said.
The government has declared a national day of mourning for Tuesday, domestic media reported.
What People Are Saying
Muhammad Yunus, the country's chief advisor currently leading the interim government in Dhaka, said in a statement: "The damage to the Air Force and Milestone School and College students, parents and teachers including others is irreparable in this accident. This is a moment of deep pain for the nation."
Bangladeshi government advisor, Asif Nazrul, said: "Such a massive, catastrophic accident has never occurred in our national history."
The European Union's delegation in Bangladesh said it was "deeply saddened" by the crash, adding: "Our hearts are with the victims, their families, and all those affected."
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Buzz Feed
4 hours ago
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People Are Sharing The Dumbest People They've Ever Met
A little while back, we shared stories from Reddit's r/StoriesAboutKevin, where people share their best stories about "Kevins," i.e. people who are staggeringly unintelligent, clueless, or incompetent. Well, members of the BuzzFeed Community chimed in with their own stories, so we rounded them up here along with some new ones from the subreddit (we also added the original post's entries at the end for good measure). Enjoy! This will make you feel smart! "Kevin once brought soup for lunch. Not in a container. Not in a thermos. Nope, he brought it in a Ziploc bag. A floppy, sad, cold bag of soup. At lunchtime, he asked where the microwave was. We said it was broken. Kevin went, 'Oh, okay, I'll just heat it up on the stove.' We assumed he'd pour it into a pot like a normal person. We were so wrong. He literally plopped the Ziploc bag directly onto the burner. We noticed the smell of burning plastic before we saw the flames. Kevin stood there poking the bag with a spoon. He said, 'I don't get it. It worked when I did it in the fireplace that one time.' It melted, of course — soup and plastic were everywhere." "I was in the checkout lane at TJ Maxx, and the couple in front of me were looking at last-minute items. The lady said, 'Oooh, Lemon Mint Tea! That sounds delicious.' She then examined the box and howled, 'Made in China?!' The man replied, 'China?! What do the Chinese know about tea?'" "A friend I had in high school burned most of his hair off because he didn't realize that lighting matches and holding them near his head would do that. He wasn't injured, but you'd think he was with the amount of bitching he did about having to shave his head. When asked why he had the matches near his head in the first place, he claimed he was trying to 'hear the fire.'" "I was going to watch Tipping the Velvet with one of my exes, and I was telling her, 'This show is British, it's from the BBC.' She very seriously replied, 'So its gonna have subtitles?'" 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I told her that wasn't true and that I needed an additional $1.50. She kept insisting that the bill was worth four dollars and that she had enough. Eventually, she relented and scrounged up some change to pay for the Oreos. I know some older dollar bills can be valuable, but this was a brand-new, crisp one-dollar bill. There was no way it was worth more than one dollar. And honestly, even if it somehow was worth four bucks — why would you spend it at a gas station, of all places?" "I once stopped Kevin from microwaving a can of corn. As in, an unopened can." "My husband once wanted to make us scrambled eggs, but we didn't have milk to make them fluffier, so instead he decided that using French vanilla creamer was a good idea. It was as bad as it sounds. Later, upon retelling the story, he somehow convinced himself that I was the one who did it (I grew up in kitchens and worked in restaurants my whole life)." 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He says he was browsing some shady website, clicked a link, and his phone 'started acting possessed.' Classic malware. I nod and tell him I can probably help if he didn't do anything drastic. Then he goes, 'Yeah, so I microwaved it for, like, 40 seconds to kill the virus. Like how hospitals sanitize stuff.' I just blinked. My coworker choked on her water. This man cooked his phone like a Hot Pocket because he thought heat would kill malware. And the best part? He wanted to claim it under WARRANTY." "A client called our grooming shop for the price of a bath and nails. I asked her what kind of dog it was. She said, 'I don't know what it is now, but when it grows up, it's going to be a black lab.' I was dumbfounded, literally. I asked her how old it was, and she said it was three months, so I'm thinking maybe 20 lbs max, so I told her maybe $20–$25. Swear to God, the lady brings 'Red' in, and he is a POMERANIAN, a POM. 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Kevin had fallen off the ladder again. Kevin's friend had insisted that Kevin rest rather than climb the ladder again, so Kevin was determined to prove he was perfectly fine to go up the ladder. Kevin was not fine." "My husband owns a small plumbing business and participates in a job-readiness program with the local high school. This semester, he got a Kevin. One of Kevin's biggest jobs is to answer the phone. On his first day, he was instructed to pick up and say, 'Custom Quality Plumbing, don't forget to ask about our seasonal maintenance deal specials, how can we help you today?' Instead, he answered the business phone, 'Kevin residence, who's calling, please?' When confronted, he explained that he had forgotten the greeting and that this was how his mother had taught him to answer phones." "When I was in high school, some of the jocks decided that Home Economics would be an easy A. One of the jocks was an absolute Kevin. 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So she switched her behavior from 'talking to neurotypical' to 'talking to neurodivergent,' and the bumps smoothed out for a while. Then the talk of taking the relationship seriously came up. Marriage. Becoming a family. And that's when the plane hit the mountain with a cartoonish bang. Kevin said he wanted to DNA test Sage's kids to ensure they were his. The kids were 5 and 3 when Sage and Kevin started dating." "I may have married a Kevin. He initially doesn't strike you as a Kevin, because he had a very successful career working for a government alphabet agency. But once he gets a notion in his head, you cannot remove it with dynamite. If his mother or his teacher, Sister Mary Godzilla, told him something 50+ years ago, then that was Revealed Truth and could not be changed. Sister MG told him men have one less rib than women. It has to be that way because God took Adam's rib to make Eve. I had to show him side-by-side images of male and female skeletons in a medical encyclopedia and make him count the ribs before he believed Sister may have been mistaken." "My husband's ex wondered why planes and helicopters didn't crash into the moon." "Kevin wanted to 'grow his own fruit' because he saw a TikTok about 'living off the land.' Respectable…until he pulled up to our local community garden with a bowl of chopped fruit. No seeds. No whole fruit. Just literal fruit salad. Mangos, bananas, grapes, and a strawberry or two diced, marinated, and probably taken from a hotel breakfast bar. He dug little holes and carefully spooned fruit chunks into the soil. Like he was planting flowers. He even watered them with pineapple juice because 'they'll grow faster if you feed them what they like.' We tried to tell him that's not how fruit works, but he insisted it would 're-form in the dirt' and 'find itself again through nature.' Bro thought fruit had a respawn point. 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Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Bangladesh mourns as toll from jet crash at school hits 27
Families and teachers gathered Tuesday at a Bangladeshi school where a training fighter jet crashed, killing 25 children and two others in the country's deadliest aviation accident in decades. Most of the victims were pupils who had just been let out of class when the Chinese-made F-7 BJI aircraft slammed into the Milestone School and College on Monday. "So far, 27 people have died. Among them, 25 are children and one is a pilot," said Sayedur Rahman from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, updating an earlier death toll of 20. "Seventy-eight people are being treated in different hospitals," added Rahman, special assistant to the ministry's chief adviser. More than 170 people were injured in the crash, said the military which is investigating the cause. The usually bustling school was eerily quiet on Tuesday morning, with classes cancelled. "Along with the children, the school has lost its life," said teacher Shahadat Hossain, whose son narrowly escaped the crash. "There are two swings in front of the affected building. During lunch breaks and after school, children play there. Even yesterday, around the time the plane crashed, students were on those swings," the 45-year-old told AFP. Around 7,000 pupils are enrolled at the school, including Abul Bashar's sixth-grade son whose best friend was killed. "He came out just two or three minutes before the accident occurred," said Bashar. "He couldn't sleep through the night and forced me to bring him to school this morning," the father added, his son standing in silence. - Children's trauma - School authorities have collected bags, shoes, and identity cards of children from the site. Pahn Chakma, a senior police officer, said that armed forces personnel are still sweeping the area. "They will hand over the place to the police later, and we will then collect evidence, including any human remains or belongings of students and others," Chakma said. Air Force personnel on duty said the remnants of the fighter jet were removed on Monday night, but they are still scouring the site for evidence. "I don't know how long it will take to return to normalcy, to relieve the children from this trauma," teacher Hossain said. On Monday night, school authorities held prayers at the campus. Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus expressed "deep grief and sorrow" over the incident and declared a day of national mourning. "The loss suffered by the Air Force, the students, parents, teachers, and staff of Milestone School and College, as well as others affected by this accident, is irreparable," he said. "This is a moment of profound pain for the nation." The military said the pilot, flight lieutenant Towkir Islam, was on a routine training mission when the jet "reportedly encountered a mechanical failure". He tried to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas but, "despite his best efforts", crashed into the two-storey school building, the military said Monday. sa-mmd/asv/rsc
