In 1992 a Boeing 747F jumbo freighter crashed into two flats in the Bijlmer. This is a monument to the people on the ground who died or lost their houses in the disaster. 39 residents are known to have died, but due to many unregistered illegal immigrants living in the cellars of the flats at the time, which were completely incinerated in the crash, it is possible that more died than could be accounted for. The monument was designed by architect Herman Hertzberger and is built around a tree that survived the crash, with the names of the known victims and mosaics laid by survivors. The foundations of the destroyed buildings are also still visible.

On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747-200 cargo aircraft of the Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The accident is known in Dutch as the Bijlmerramp . The subsequent health effects in survivors, and eventual revelations of the cargo manifest, showed at least three chemical precursors used in the production of the nerve agents sarin and soman. Forty-seven people are known to have been killed, including all 4 on board and 43 on the ground. The exact number killed on the ground is uncertain, as the building housed many unregistered residents. Eleven people were seriously injured and 15 received minor injuries. The accident is the deadliest aviation disaster to have occurred in the Netherlands. In 1998, El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman publicly revealed the aircraft was carrying 190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate , later a Schedule 2 chemical under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, that can be used to produce nerve agents including sarin and soman. According to Jean Pascal Zanders, a European Union Institute for Security Studies scholar, DMMP was one of three sarin precursors on board, and sarin requires four precursors. The shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the Israel Institute for Biological Research under a U.S. Department of Commerce license, in accordance with international regulations at the time.