Seventeen children killed in Peshawar school roof collapse

By Staff Reporter

PESHAWAR: At least 17 children have been killed after the roof of a private school collapsed in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.

A female teacher also died in the collapse in the Dir Colony area on Thursday morning, according to Muhammad Asim, a spokesperson for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), the city’s main public hospital. More than 30 injured people were taken there, he said, some of them in a critical condition. An emergency was declared at the hospital.

“All the children are aged thirteen and under,” Asim said.

Local media identified the school as the Al Khair School System, in Dir Colony near College Road. Footage and photographs from the scene showed parents rushing to the site and joining rescue workers as they searched through the rubble for children trapped beneath the roof.

The toll climbed sharply through the hours. Rescue 1122, the provincial emergency service, initially said four people had died and about 20, including students and teachers, had been taken to hospital. Its spokesperson, Bilal Ahmed Faizi, said the figure came from LRH. An earlier statement from the agency said more than 10 children had been given first aid and taken to hospital, and that several were feared to be trapped.

The hospital administration later said 17 bodies had been brought in, along with 20 injured children.

The rescue operation was still underway on Thursday afternoon, with teams searching the debris for children and school staff. Officials feared the death toll could rise further.

The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.

Samar Haroon Bilour, adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor on information and public relations, expressed grief over the collapse and directed that the best possible medical care be given to the injured children.

Building and roof collapses are common in Pakistan, where construction standards are poorly enforced, and substandard materials are widely used.

Thursday’s disaster is the latest in a series involving schools and children this year. In June, 14 children died when the roof of a private tuition centre collapsed in Lahore. Police said the building was old and an unfinished upper floor had given way, and the centre’s owner and another person were arrested. The collapse came less than two months after four children were killed and 20 people injured when a classroom roof fell in at a private school in Dera Ghazi Khan.

In July, three girls aged between three and 13 were killed when part of the outer wall of a government primary school near Umerkot collapsed on them. The same month, a child died and at least five others were injured when the roof of a private school under construction collapsed in Lahore’s Baghbanpura neighbourhood.