At least 20 die as fighter plane crashes on to school campus in Bangladesh

At least 20 people were killed and nearly 200 injured – many of them children – when a Bangladeshi fighter jet on a routine training exercise crashed into a school in Dhaka in the country's worst aviation disaster in decades.

- Redwan Ahmed

The jet, a Chinese-made F-7BGI, hit the private Milestone school in the capital as students were ending or had left afternoon classes, witnesses said. It reportedly struck a five-storey academic building before crashing onto a two-storey structure on the campus, triggering a massive explosion and fire.

Videos of the aftermath of the crash showed a big fire near a lawn, emitting a thick plume of smoke into the sky, as crowds watched from a distance.

The Bangladeshi air force said the jet had experienced a mechanical failure.