At least 34 people, most of them children under the age of 13, were killed when the roof of a private school collapsed in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan, according to hospital officials cited in the report. At least 19 others were injured, some critically.
The collapse occurred at the Al-Khair private school in the Dir Colony neighbourhood. Emergency services were alerted at 8:48 am local time, and rescue workers and residents spent hours searching through the rubble amid fears that more children remained trapped beneath the debris.
Rescue operations were complicated by the school’s location on a narrow street where only one vehicle could pass at a time, making it difficult to remove injured victims and transport them to hospital, according to a reporter at the scene. Mohammad Asim, spokesperson for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, confirmed the casualties and injuries. Police said the school’s owner had been arrested as authorities began investigating the building’s structure and the circumstances surrounding the collapse.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari expressed shock over the disaster, with his office describing it as a tragedy that had plunged the nation into grief. The cause of the collapse remained under investigation, and authorities were examining the building’s structural condition as rescue teams continued their work.