Fact Check: Viral Image Is NOT Authentic Photo Of Chinese-Made F-7 Fighter Jet Crash Site At Medical School Campus In Dhaka, Bangladesh

Fact Check

  • by: Uliana Malashenko
Fact Check: Viral Image Is NOT Authentic Photo Of Chinese-Made F-7 Fighter Jet Crash Site At Medical School Campus In Dhaka, Bangladesh Not Real Photo

Does a viral image show the site of the July 21, 2025, military training plane crash in Dhaka, Bangladesh? No, that's not true: The social media image contradicted what was shown in footage and photographs published by credible media outlets. Authentic visual materials showed that most of the plane's fuselage was obscured from cameras by the debris.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on July 21, 2025. It opened:

🛑 Photo of the Chinese-made F-7 fighter jet that crashed on the campus of Dhaka city's Milestone School & College at 1:06 pm local time. Until now, 29 students with serious injuries have been rushed to the National Burn Unit.

This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:

Screenshot 2025-07-21 at 12.20.42 PM.png

(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the x.com/salah_shoaib account)

The post referred to an airplane crash (archived here) that took place (archived here) hours earlier that day in the capital of Bangladesh, roughly at this spot (archived here).

Photos (archived here) and videos -- here (archived here) and here (archived here) -- published by repubtable media organizations show that the jet's fuselage did not come to a full stop in the rectangular field surrounded by buildings -- the aircraft crashed into the building, and a significant portion of it remained covered by the debris in the first hours after the incident.

According to the AP (archived here), the aircraft's model was a Chinese-made F-7 BGI. Those are an upgraded version of the Soviet-era MiG-21 model, Military.com (archived here) wrote earlier.

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  Uliana Malashenko

Uliana Malashenko joined Lead Stories as a freelance fact checking reporter in March 2022. Since then, she has investigated viral claims about U.S. elections and international conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, among many other things. Before Lead Stories she spent over a decade working in broadcast and digital journalism, specializing in covering breaking news and politics. She is based in New York.

Read more about or contact Uliana Malashenko

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