At Least 33 Children, Plus Teacher, Killed in Pakistan School Collapse

At least 33 children and their female teacher were killed at the Al Khair Education Center in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Thursday when the roof of a building collapsed during morning classes.

Rescue workers said it took four hours to recover all the bodies from the debris.

According to local officials, the roof from a higher floor collapsed and brought two stories of the school building down, crushing the students and teacher beneath. Local hospitals said they were treating about 50 injured, including three children in critical condition.

“Its roof was overloaded with construction on a weak structure, which caused the collapse,” said Peshawar police chief Saeed Ahmed.

A teacher from another school who rushed to the scene told the BBC he “personally pulled out six children with my own hands.”

“Most of them were alive and talking, but later it was found that they had passed away,” the teacher said.

Ahmed said the owner of the school, Mohammad Khan, has been arrested. Khan denied accusations of negligence, saying heavy rains caused the roof to become weak enough to collapse.

Reuters quoted distraught relatives of the dead and injured accusing school officials of ignoring their concerns about poor maintenance and shoddy construction. The school is one of many low-cost private institutions that serve Pakistan’s poorest residents, as the government spends very little on public education, and even less on oversight for private academies. A similar roof collapse catastrophe in Lahore in June killed 14 children.

The Al Khair center is located in a poor district of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border, a province that was placed under a state of emergency on Monday by President Shehbaz Sharif due to cross-border attacks by Islamist terrorists.

“Make ‌an example ⁠of them, a lesson for all, so that no one dares open a school just to make money without providing facilities,” said an angry Peshawar resident who said his two nephews were killed in the roof collapse.

Surviving teachers said the Al Khair Education Center was a three-story building with about 1,200 students. Ahmed said 110 students were attending lessons in three classrooms when disaster struck. Most of the students are 13 or younger, and some are only six years old.

Police chief Ahmed pledged a thorough investigation into possible “violation of building codes” in the incident. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor Faisal Karim Kundi ordered a safety audit of all schools, to “identify potential risks and ensure that immediate corrective measures are taken wherever necessary.”