Teacher dies saving students from Bangladesh jet crash inferno
Maherin Chowdhury, a 46-year-old English teacher, went back again and again into a burning classroom to rescue her students on Monday when a F-7 BGI Bangladesh Air Force crashed into the school, trapping them in fire and debris.
Even as her own clothes were engulfed in flames, she continued, her brother, Munaf Mojib Chowdhury, told the Reuters news agency by telephone.
Ms Chowdhury died on Monday after suffering near-total burns to her body.
She is survived by her husband and two teenage sons.
"When her husband called her, pleading with her to leave the scene and think of her children, she refused, saying, 'They are also my children. They are burning. How can I leave them?'" Mr Chowdhury said.
At least 29 people, most of them children, were killed in the incident.
The military said the aircraft suffered mechanical failure.
He added that he found out about his sister's act of bravery when he visited the hospital and met students she rescued.
The jet had taken off from a nearby air base on a routine training mission, the military said.
After experiencing mechanical failure, the pilot tried to divert the aircraft away from populated areas, but it crashed into the campus.
The pilot was among those killed.
"When the plane crashed and fire broke out, everyone was running to save their lives. She [Ms Chowdhury] ran to save others," Khadija Akter, the headmistress of the school's primary section, told Reuters.
She was buried on Tuesday in her home district of Nilphamari, in northern Bangladesh.
Students from the school and others from nearby colleges protested as two government officials visited the crash site. The students demanded an accurate death toll and shouted: "Why did our brothers die? We demand answers!"
Elsewhere in the capital, hundreds of protesting students, some of them waving sticks, broke through the main gate of the federal government secretariat, demanding the resignation of the education adviser, according to local TV footage.
Witnesses said police with batons charged towards them, fired tear gas and used sound grenades to disperse the crowd, leaving dozens injured.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Talebur Rahman said the officers had to use tear gas to disperse the protesters.
He said he did not have information about the number of injured.
The protesting students called for those killed and injured to be named, the decommissioning of what they said were old and risky jets, and a change in air force training procedures.
A statement from the press office of Bangladesh's interim administrator said the government, the military, school and hospital authorities were working together to publish a list of victims.
It also said the air force would be told not to operate training aircraft in populated areas.
The F-7 BGI is the final and most advanced variant in China's Chengdu J-7/F-7 aircraft family, according to Jane's Information Group, an open-source intelligence company.
Bangladesh signed a contract for 16 aircraft in 2011 and deliveries were completed by 2013.
The Chengdu F-7 is the licence-built version of the Soviet era MiG-21.
Reuters
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ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
Enduring life: What Shakespeare's King Lear can reveal about our political moment - ABC Religion & Ethics
King Lear's life leading up to his death impresses on us that a life of endurance is likely to be our lot, too, at least for some of the time and to some extent. Our need to endure is not likely to be as dramatic as his was. He had to endure internecine conflict, misjudgement, abandonment by his daughters, a military conflict, and deepening madness. But it is hard for anyone to escape having to endure the irony which, every so often, comes at us from our blind side. The irony in Lear's tragedy is that despite his good intention in making public his daughters' inheritance, to ensure 'future strife / May be prevented now', his action brings it on. Civilians living in war zones — such as Gaza and Ukraine — certainly have a need to endure. In the play Edgar's father, Gloucester, has lost the will to live, having been blinded under torture, and Edgar presses him to hasten away to safety from a battle zone. 'Men must endure', he tells him, if an optimum outcome is to be reached: 'Ripeness is all.' Lear declares human life to be as cheap as that of a beast. The comparison sounds extreme, but it is understandable. Truth is said to be the first casualty in war, but the right to life for civilians is a better fit for that infamous distinction. From the earliest days of current wars, civilians have been killed and injured in large numbers. An open-air music festival, schools, hospitals, apartment blocks — they have all been hit. Scenes of distraught survivors grieving the death of loved ones continue as if they are a normal part of warfare. This is happening despite the fact that civilians have a right to protection under international law. Despite also the United Nations and aid agencies continuing to call on both sides to stop killing civilians and agree to a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. These calls have gone unheeded for so long now that their meaning has worn thin. It feels like the wars are killing off the idea of a universal human rights morality on which the law is based. Goneril does not feel bound by morality. She excoriates her husband Albany as 'a milk-livered man' and 'a moral fool' for not supporting her in her determination to undermine Lear's power. Nor does Edmund feel bound by morality in plotting to get rid of his brother Edgar in order to become the next Earl of Gloucester. In the conflict between Hamas and Israel, there is something of Goneril and Edmund's hard-hearted ruthlessness. Even if some settlement can be brokered, severe damage has been done to the moral precept that civilians have a right to protection during war. In an article in the Financial Times , historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari wrote that the current US administration is also destroying acceptance of morality: According to the Trumpian world-view, considerations of justice, morality and international law are irrelevant, and the only thing that matters in international relations is power. This, too, sounds extreme. Yet it is understandable given the events that happened in the first six months of Trump's second presidency — a presidency that started with him signing a range of executive orders live on television with the performative flourish of a 'strongman' leader who sees his own power as paramount. US President Donald Trump signs executive orders during an indoor inauguration parade at Capital One Arena on 20 January 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images) As in Shakespeare's play, events have been happening fast in a way that is dramatic in an all-too-real sense and with a climax still to come. Among the events are summary heavy-handed arrests of undocumented migrants, with raids on their homes and workplaces in images reminiscent of a police state. There was also what comes across as an attempt to intimidate protesters demonstrating against the heavy-handed seizures, by misrepresenting the demonstration as insurrectionist and deploying the National Guard in support of law enforcement agencies. To the fore also is Russia's war of attrition in Ukraine and Europe's rush to build up its armaments. In his retort to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plea for US support against Russia — 'You don't have the cards' — Trump illustrated his power-based approach to politics in which stronger countries dominate weaker ones. US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Oval Office at the White House on 28 February 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / Getty Images) The extent to which Trump remains bound by the rule of law will be a measure of how far he is prepared to go in becoming a law unto himself. So far significant Supreme Court rulings have been in his favour. His singular power was highlighted by the 2024 ruling that found a president is entitled under the Constitution 'to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts'. The Court also ruled, in the birthright citizenship case, that judges in lower courts have limited authority to block the president's executive orders. The ramifications of this judgement remain to be seen, but they may greatly increase Trump's store of power. Perhaps the most insidious of his polices has been his administration's attacks on civil society institutions — particularly on universities as independent centres of learning. These attacks have the sound of opening salvos to bring the universities more under its control. It has opposed programmes that support diversity, equality and inclusion. And the fear is that the type of courses the universities will be allowed to offer, and their contents, will be vetted to fit an authoritarian right-wing ideology. 'History is written by the victors', it is said. It may well be the Trump regime will insist on a particular version that suits its ideology to the exclusion of others. If it does, this would be a far cry from the liberal university education that Cardinal John Henry Newman saw as foundational for the development of the individual and society. The glasses and personal items of Cardinal John Henry Newman lay on his writing desk in his living quarters on 11 August 2010 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong / Getty Images) Newman believed the university should provide an education in the classics for all students, in addition to providing education in the professions. Classical education is not just about acquiring additional knowledge. It is about assimilating knowledge and understanding to enlarge the mind and become better able to reason clearly. Such an education enables a person to evaluate critically different systems of thought and practice, including liberalism. Perceptively, Newman observed that among other benefits comes a certain freedom: 'you must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you'. If we are to have an active right to a quality of life beyond having to endure adversity, it is imperative to have freedom and to be educated to understand and appreciate its benefits. The appeal that far-right parties have for many people lies partly in the impression they give that the party alone know how to rule in everyone's best interests. There is impatience, too, with the slow workings of a parliamentary democracy and a hankering for a simple clarity enforced by a rigid hard-right government. Their appeal lies also from cutting out what they judge to be liberal excesses. But the life force is not easily confined. The appeal of the Fool to Lear, and to us, lies in his irreverent words and antics. We see him as the person who punctures holes in the pretensions of dogmatists to let in more of the life they want to exclude. Participants at the 'No Kings' protest in New York City on 14 June 2025. (Photo by Jenna Greene / WWD via Getty Images) The 'No Kings' demonstrations against Trump's policies in cities and towns across the United States marked the first major resurgence in support for democratic rights. Lear, too, was resurgent. In his initial defiance of his daughters' treatment of him, he demonstrates his freedom to respond along with his right to be treated honestly and not exploited. Our ill treatment by others brings out in us a demand that they redress the wrong they have done. Lear's travails cut to the bone in showing that our feeling of having rights counts, and that it cannot be easily dismissed. Moreover, from his remorse upon realising he wrongly excluded Cordelia from a share of his kingdom when failing to recognise her honesty, he shows that he knows other people have rights too. Unlike her sisters, she eschewed the sycophant's 'glib and oily art' and spoke sincerely about the love she had for her father in words he misjudged as inadequate. At the same time, circumstances can be complicated, making it hard to see exactly where justice lies. In Lear's case he is partly responsible for his own downfall. There is vanity, or at least insecurity, in seeking declarations of love from his daughters. And, as is often the case, we can be emotionally needy and complex in how we behave without being aware of it at the time. To recognise this, and make allowances for it, is part of a human response. Lear shows us his humanity in recognising he made a mistake and that he needs to learn from his regret. Striking his head with his hand, he reprimands himself for letting his 'folly in' and his 'dear judgement out!' Greg Hicks as King Lear and Kathryn Hunter as the Fool in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'King Lear', directed by David Farr at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, on 25 February 2010. (Photo by robbie jack / Corbis via Getty Images) But Lear's story is first and foremost a tragedy. Reduced to wandering grief-stricken on a heath in a 'pitiless storm', he descends into insanity and death. I imagine him crestfallen and anguished at having to bear the irony that his attempt to do good only unleashed pent-up desires and antagonisms. I imagine him no longer a king with a crown and throne, but an ordinary man defeated by circumstances and now aware, as never before, of how little control we have over the consequences of our actions. Franz Kafka in his novels evokes something of the fear and dread at being hostage to forces over which we have little or no control. An atmosphere that became all-too-real in the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with their surveillance of citizens and imprisonment or worse for those they deemed a threat to their rule. There is an ominous feeling now of being swept up in a momentum towards a world divided into competing power blocs. A feeling, too, of a weakened liberal Europe being left behind in a struggle to keep its espousal of human rights relevant. The felt existence of forces stronger than us is augmented by living enmeshed in the tech-mediated world of the internet — a world we are increasingly dependent on. For all its benefits, it raises fears about what it may be doing to human agency. We can easily imagine authoritarian rulers making use of it for invasive surveillance of the population. Developments in artificial intelligence are set to draw us further and deeper into a tech-mediated world. Already some kind of trans-human experience of life is being envisioned. It may well be that we expect too much from asserting that people have human rights. Their roots lie in the idea of natural rights — an idea with a long history dating back at least to the Middle Ages. In support of the idea, it is argued that from our primary natural inclination to continue to exist comes a right to life. But rights are not physical features or qualities of people in the same obvious way that our body has visible parts. They do not have an empirical foundation. In his book After Virtue , Alastair MacIntyre argues that we cannot demonstrate or intuit an objective basis for the existence of rights independently of wishes for them, even though we have enshrined them in legally binding agreements and conventions. Nor for him are rights self-evident. From their lack of philosophical justification, he calls them 'fictions'. Throughout history people's actual behaviour has flown in the face of recognising that everyone has rights by virtue of their human nature. We have only to think of slavery and the withholding of civil rights from Black people in the American South, or of the struggle for women to have equality rights. If rights were an intrinsic part of our nature, we would expect them to have been recognised and heeded a lot more than has been evident. Protesters holding signs during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC, on 28 August 1963. (Photo by Marion S. Trikosko / Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Does it matter that rights don't have an empirical basis? In one sense, not a whole lot. Rather than being something we possess of our nature, rights are more like security and developmental measures we feel we need or desire, and that over the centuries people have fought to have recognised. This understanding of rights as measures that codify moral feelings can seem a good enough justification. But in another sense the lack of an empirical foundation, or of a philosophical proof of their existence, does matter. It leaves rights hanging in the air without a compelling moral authority to make people feel they have to abide by them. At the same time, the call for rights to be recognised universally came out of particularly strong and widely shared feelings in the aftermath of the Second World War. And I would argue, as David Hume does in his Treatise on Human Nature , that feelings and emotions are the source of our morality. Depending on the nature of particular actions and conditions, we experience towards them either 'agreeable' or 'uneasy' moral feeling, or a feeling that provides a sense of 'pleasure' or 'pain'. Feelings for Hume are also active in moral arguments and reasoning such that our judgements are never purely rational: 'Morality is more properly felt than judged.' At the same time, reasoning and intelligence remain vital — in particular, their cultivation through a broad-minded education such as the one Newman advocated. For Hume, by using our reason we can educate ourselves about the behaviours and conditions that arouse our feelings, and from doing this our feelings may change or be supported. Portrait of David Hume (1711-1776) by Allan Ramsay from 1766, found in the collection of National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Photo by Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images) Hume believed we naturally recognise other people to be human like ourselves, and that it is natural for us to feel compassion for strangers in their suffering. Edgar shows the primacy he gives to feelings in understanding morality. When the blind Gloucester asks him 'what are you?', Edgar tells him that, though he has borne 'Fortune's blows', he has learned from 'feeling sorrows' to be still a person 'pregnant with good pity'. Then he adds: 'Give me your hand'. It is Edgar, too, who in his concluding words towards the end of the play calls on people to speak openly about how they feel as a means of helping to avoid tragedy. Lear and Gloucester have a feeling for social justice. An unexpected turn of events exposes them to the harshness of nature, especially to the dire conditions in which people have to live. It makes both of them aware of their privileged status compared to the poor of the realm. They recognise the disparity between the justice that is supposed to reside in 'the heavens' and the injustice the poor suffer in having to endure continuous hardship. Lear faults himself for having taken 'too little care' of their plight. And Gloucester reproaches the 'lust-dieted man … that will not see / Because he does not feel'. Gloucester shows also that he believes 'distribution should undo excess, / And each man have enough'. We can read into their words not just the rootedness of morality in what it means to be human, but also that morality is an active force that drives improvements in social and political conditions. Geoffrey Freshwater as Earl of Gloucester and Charles Aitken as Edgar in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'King Lear', at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, on 25 February 2010. (Photo by robbie jack / Corbis via Getty Images) But as the basis for morality, feelings and emotions have their own shortcomings. They show morals to be relative to us as individuals, and also to the moral expectancies in our society or culture insofar as we agree or disagree with them. This leaves open the likelihood that we will differ from other people in both how we feel about an issue and in the strength of our feeling toward it. We differ emotionally in particular over whether abortion and doctor assisted dying should be provided for in legislation, or not. We differ also over whether the conditions prescribed for a just war have been met, such as the war having a just cause, and whether a response to an attack is proportionate or excessive. The relativity of morals to feelings shows the difficulty of firmly establishing a universally acceptable moral system with respect for human life at its centre. Yet we can look on the relativity as facilitating a space for discussion and debate that is part of human experience. We can also see the relativity making us rightly suspicious of moral absolutes as solutions to complex issues. Hume believed no person or nation could be 'utterly deprived' of moral feelings. No doubt this is true for most people. But not for everyone or in all circumstances. From Hannah Arendt's study of the Nazi functionary Adolph Eichmann we have learned how easily evil can become widespread and banal. Malign feelings and intentions are on one side of an age-old struggle between good and evil. But where discussion of differences on issues can lead to argument and the shoring up of entrenched positions, some images can deeply move us and provide a non-partisan sense of moral worth beyond argument. Among them is Raphael's painting The Sistine Madonna . 'The Sistine Madonna' (circa 1513–1514) by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. (Photo by Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) In his essay on the painting, Vasily Grossman describes how moved he was on seeing the painting in Moscow's Puskin museum in 1955. He was struck by its fusion of immortality as a work of art with the iconic significance of a mother holding her child in her arms — an image immediately and universally recognisable. The young mother has a beauty 'closely tied to earthly life. It is democratic, human and humane beauty.' He describes the look on the face of both mother and child as 'calm and sad'. It also shows apprehension about their future in a violent and uncertain world. Grossman, a war correspondent with the Red Army, entered Treblinka in September 1944. And, on leaving the Pushkin museum, it came to him that among the faces of the many people who stepped down from the freight wagons to see armed guards directing them along was the look Raphael had painted on the faces of the mother and child. Ultimately for Grossman, the image shows a mother's soul to be 'something inaccessible to human consciousness'. But what the image does make accessible is a sense of how vulnerable human beings are, regardless of ethnicity, religion or politics. It shows how necessary our need is for Edgar's helping hand to guide us away from danger and towards a quality of life beyond endurance of adversity. Manus Charleton writes essays and fiction. A former lecturer in ethics and politics at the Atlantic Technological University Sligo, he is the author of Ethics for Social Care in Ireland: Philosophy and Practice.
ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
Teacher dies saving students from Bangladesh jet crash inferno
A teacher is being praised for her bravery after losing her life saving students when a Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet crashed into her school and erupted in a fireball. Maherin Chowdhury, a 46-year-old English teacher, went back again and again into a burning classroom to rescue her students on Monday when a F-7 BGI Bangladesh Air Force crashed into the school, trapping them in fire and debris. Even as her own clothes were engulfed in flames, she continued, her brother, Munaf Mojib Chowdhury, told the Reuters news agency by telephone. Ms Chowdhury died on Monday after suffering near-total burns to her body. She is survived by her husband and two teenage sons. "When her husband called her, pleading with her to leave the scene and think of her children, she refused, saying, 'They are also my children. They are burning. How can I leave them?'" Mr Chowdhury said. At least 29 people, most of them children, were killed in the incident. The military said the aircraft suffered mechanical failure. He added that he found out about his sister's act of bravery when he visited the hospital and met students she rescued. The jet had taken off from a nearby air base on a routine training mission, the military said. After experiencing mechanical failure, the pilot tried to divert the aircraft away from populated areas, but it crashed into the campus. The pilot was among those killed. "When the plane crashed and fire broke out, everyone was running to save their lives. She [Ms Chowdhury] ran to save others," Khadija Akter, the headmistress of the school's primary section, told Reuters. She was buried on Tuesday in her home district of Nilphamari, in northern Bangladesh. Students from the school and others from nearby colleges protested as two government officials visited the crash site. The students demanded an accurate death toll and shouted: "Why did our brothers die? We demand answers!" Elsewhere in the capital, hundreds of protesting students, some of them waving sticks, broke through the main gate of the federal government secretariat, demanding the resignation of the education adviser, according to local TV footage. Witnesses said police with batons charged towards them, fired tear gas and used sound grenades to disperse the crowd, leaving dozens injured. Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Talebur Rahman said the officers had to use tear gas to disperse the protesters. He said he did not have information about the number of injured. The protesting students called for those killed and injured to be named, the decommissioning of what they said were old and risky jets, and a change in air force training procedures. A statement from the press office of Bangladesh's interim administrator said the government, the military, school and hospital authorities were working together to publish a list of victims. It also said the air force would be told not to operate training aircraft in populated areas. The F-7 BGI is the final and most advanced variant in China's Chengdu J-7/F-7 aircraft family, according to Jane's Information Group, an open-source intelligence company. Bangladesh signed a contract for 16 aircraft in 2011 and deliveries were completed by 2013. The Chengdu F-7 is the licence-built version of the Soviet era MiG-21. Reuters
News.com.au
4 days ago
- News.com.au
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.
