School Roof Collapse in Peshawar, Pakistan, Kills at Least 28 Children and a Teacher

At least 28 children and a teacher were killed Thursday morning when the roof of a two-story private school in Peshawar, Pakistan, collapsed onto classrooms during morning classes. Forty-seven children were injured, some of them in critical condition, a hospital spokesman said, and rescuers were still pulling survivors from the rubble.

The collapse struck the Al-Khair Education Centre, a private school in the Dir Colony neighborhood of central Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Heavy overnight rainfall had weakened the roof, Bilal Ahmed of the local rescue services told CNN. The roof of the upper floor fell onto the classroom below, the rescue service said, crushing the room and trapping children inside. All of the children killed or injured were 13 years old or younger, the hospital spokesman said.

Several children remained trapped in the rubble hours after the collapse. Emergency teams sent 16 ambulances and more than 60 rescue workers to the site, and residents were among the first to arrive, digging with their hands before heavy equipment reached the school. Anguished parents gathered outside the school and at the Lady Reading Hospital, where an emergency was declared and staff treated the wounded. Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed told Reuters that 110 students had been in the three classrooms at the time, and that the death toll could still rise.

Owner arrested, building blamed

Peshawar police said the school’s owner had been arrested. The police chief described the building as structurally weak, saying extra construction on top of the roof had overloaded it. “It was a weak building structure,” he said, according to Reuters. “Its roof was overweight with construction on a weak structure that caused the collapse.”

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari called the collapse a “heart-wrenching tragedy” and ordered a full investigation. “In this hour of sorrow, the entire nation shares equally in the grief of the affected families,” his office posted on X.

A recurring pattern

Building collapses are a frequent occurrence in Pakistan, where construction standards are poorly enforced and many structures are built with substandard materials, according to CNN. The collapse came just weeks after a fire tore through a hospital in the capital, Islamabad, killing at least 14 newborns and leading to multiple arrests. In July, a roof collapse at a tutoring center under construction in Lahore also killed schoolchildren, police and rescue officials said at the time.

Reporting based on coverage by CNN and The Associated Press.