By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: At least 32 children and a teacher were killed on Thursday when the roof of a privately run school collapsed onto classrooms in Peshawar, in a disaster police blamed on a weak building carrying too much weight.
The dead included children aged between six and 14, most of them under 13, according to officials at Lady Reading Hospital, where the victims were taken. Around 50 children were injured, according to hospital figures. The hospital said 61 people had been brought in, and 30 were later discharged after treatment.
The collapse struck the Al-Khair Education Center in the crowded Dir Colony neighbourhood at about 8.48am, police said. Peshawar’s Capital City Police Officer, Dr Mian Saeed Ahmed, said more than 110 students were in class in the building at the time. He said early in the rescue that he feared the toll would rise, as only 47 of the pupils in the three affected classrooms had been pulled out.
A rescue official said a roof on a higher floor gave way and came down on the ceiling below, crumpling two storeys. Bilal Ahmad Faizi, a spokesman for Rescue 1122, said teams arrived to find “one roof had collapsed onto another”, trapping children in the classroom beneath.
“It was a weak building structure,” Dr Ahmed said. “Its roof was overloaded with construction on a weak structure, which caused the collapse.” He had earlier accused those responsible for the premises of “huge negligence” for seating children from three classes in such a fragile building, in a congested alley.
Emergency services sent 16 ambulances, two disaster response vehicles and more than 60 personnel. Rescuers worked for four to five hours in the narrow streets around the school while parents and relatives gathered outside. Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Afaq Wazir said the operation was over. “Rescue teams have cleared all the debris, and no more injured children are at the scene,” he said. The hospital declared an emergency.
Samiullah, a parent, told Dawn newspaper he reached the site around 9am, about ten minutes after a call from home, and pulled out three girls, all under eight. He has six children at the school. “When I saw the building, I thought my son, who was in a ground-floor classroom beneath the collapsed first floor, had also died,” he said. The boy had left the room to drink water.
A resident, Sohail, said panic spread after his niece escaped and ran home to raise the alarm. “I saw around 10 to 15 children trapped beneath the rubble, with debris piled up to their necks. We quickly pulled them out,” he said.
Most of the victims came from low-income families. Mohammad Zaman, who lost two nephews, said relatives accused the school of ignoring concerns about the building. “Make an example of them, a lesson for all, so that no one dares open a school just to make money without providing facilities,” he said.
The school’s owner, Khan Muhammad, has attributed the collapse to several days of rain. He said foundation work on the building began about 18 months ago, and that a second-floor room fell first and brought down the rooms beneath it. The provincial education secretary, Inayatullah Waseem, said the building was in a dilapidated state and that the department had received no report on its condition before the collapse. The Peshawar police and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s governor have said the owner has been arrested.
Governor Faisal Karim Kundi attended the funeral prayers on Thursday and visited the site. He said an inquiry team had been formed and that its first task would be to establish who issued the school’s no-objection certificate. “A transparent investigation into the incident will be conducted and those responsible will be identified,” he said. He announced compensation of Rs1m for the family of each person killed and Rs200,000 for each of the injured. He has also ordered a structural safety audit of schools across the province.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Department set up a separate fact-finding committee, which includes Javid Iqbal, chairman of the Private Schools Regulatory Authority, and Muhammad Farooq, a deputy secretary at the department. It was asked to report on Thursday. Later in the day the department ordered district committees to inspect private school buildings across the province, covering roofs, walls, columns, foundations and staircases. Buildings will be placed in one of three categories (safe, requiring repairs, or potentially unsafe), and the committees have three days to report.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif telephoned Mr Kundi and, according to his office, sought a comprehensive report and told officials to take legal action against those responsible. In a post on X he said: “No parent should have to endure such pain.” President Asif Ali Zardari called for a comprehensive investigation and said all school buildings must meet safety standards. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and his sister Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari also expressed grief.
Unicef’s representative in Pakistan, Pernille Ironside, said the agency was ready to provide psychosocial support to affected children and families. “Going to school should never put a child’s life at risk,” she said. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was “appalled” and called this “not an accident but a preventable failure”. It demanded an independent, time-bound inquiry with public findings, and accountability for the owner and for regulators “who allowed unsafe buildings to operate”.
Building and roof collapses are common in Pakistan, often blamed on poor safety standards and substandard materials. A roof collapse at a tuition centre in Lahore earlier this year killed 14 children, and four children died in a classroom roof collapse at a private school in Dera Ghazi Khan. In July, three girls were killed when part of a wall at a government primary school near Umerkot fell on them. The Peshawar disaster also comes weeks after a fire at a hospital in Islamabad killed at least 14 newborns.
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