A year after deadly jet crash at Bangladesh school, families demand answers
It was a normal day for sixth-grade student Nure Jannat Yusha when suddenly, a Bangladeshi air force jet crashed into her school in the capital
It was a normal day for sixth-grade student Nure Jannat Yusha when suddenly, a Bangladeshi air force jet crashed into her school in the capital, Dhaka, killing 36 people - most of them children. Within minutes, Milestone School and College, a private institution buzzing with student activity, was transformed into a scene of chaos and raging flames. It was the deadliest aviation disaster the country had seen in decades.
Earlier this week, families and survivors gathered to mark one year since the incident - many of them students who say they are struggling to return to normal life, Yusha among them. "Even now, if I go to school and see a plane, I feel afraid. I can't sleep at night. In my dreams, someone is throwing me into the fire," she told BBC Bengali.
She was one of more than 160 people who were injured in the crash at Milestone School - and among those at the memorial held at a hospital in Dhaka on Tuesday, where the families of some victims say they are still waiting for answers about the deadly crash. Yusha's mother Yasin Akter says her child had once dreamt of becoming a dancer - an aspiration that has since faded.
"My daughter screams all day and is afraid," she says, adding that Yusha has become paranoid about planes falling from the sky. "Earlier she was interested in studies. Now she does not want to study any more."
The BriefWire