At least 28 students, all of them below the age of 13, and one teacher were killed in a school roof collapse in Pakistan‘s Peshawar city, a local hospital spokesperson has said.
The students and the teacher were brought dead to the Lady Reading Hospital along with more than a dozen people who were injured in the incident, hospital spokesperson Mohammad Asim said.
Several children remained trapped under the rubble in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Bilal Faizi, a spokesman for the emergency services.
A hospital spokesman, Mohammad Asim, also confirmed the casualties, saying some of the injured were in critical condition. All the children killed or injured were age 13 or younger, he said. The hospital declared an emergency as medical staff treated the wounded. Rescuers said that they were removing debris to reach those trapped.
According to witnesses, residents were among the first to reach the school in a congested neighborhood in central Peshawar. Rescue workers arrived within minutes of being alerted, according to accounts from the scene.
A resident, Mohammad Khan, said rescuers carefully removed debris, trying to reach children and staff feared trapped beneath the collapsed roof. Outside the school and at the state-run Lady Reading Hospital, anguished parents sought information about their children, unsure whether they had survived.
The cause of the collapse was under investigation. Peshawar police chief Saeed Ahmed said that the school’s owner had been arrested. He said that the building was structurally weak.