Teacher dies saving students from hell in Bangladesh jet crash

When a Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet crashed into his school and exploded in a fireball on Monday, Maherin Chowdhury rushed to save some of the hundreds of students and teachers in danger, putting their safety above his own.

The 46-year-old English teacher repeatedly returned to a burning classroom to rescue her students, even when her own clothes were on fire, her brother, Munaf Mojib Chowdhury, told Reuters by telephone.

Maherin died on Monday after suffering near-total burns. She left behind her husband and two teenage children.

"When her husband called her, asking her to leave the place and think about her children, she refused, saying, 'They are my children too, they are burning. How can I leave them?'" Chowdhury said.

At least 29 people, most of them children, died when the F-7 BGI crashed into the school, trapping them in the fire and wreckage. The military said the aircraft suffered a mechanical failure.

"I don't know exactly how many people she saved, but it must have been at least 20. She pulled them out with her bare hands," he said, adding that he learned of his sister's act of bravery when he visited the hospital and met the students she had rescued.

The jet took off from a nearby air base on a routine training mission, according to the military. After suffering a mechanical failure, the pilot attempted to divert the aircraft away from populated areas, but it crashed into the campus. The pilot was among the dead.

"When the plane crashed and the fire started, everyone was running for their lives, she ran to save others," Khadija Akter, headmistress of the school's primary section, told Reuters by telephone about Maherin.

She was buried on Tuesday in her home district of Nilphamari in northern Bangladesh.