At least 34 pupils and a teacher have died after the roof of a private school collapsed in Pakistan. The disaster unfolded at the Al Khair Education Center in Peshawar during morning classes, in the country’s deadliest incident of its kind.
Some of the children killed or injured were young as six, according to Mohammed Asim, spokesman for the Lady Reading Hospital.
He said more than 50 people were wounded, including children who are in a critical condition with head injuries.
“The fatalities include 12 girl students and a female teacher”, he said.
The hospital declared an emergency as medical staff treated the wounded.
Everyone trapped beneath the rubble has now been pulled out.
The incident took place at 8.48 a.m. local time and the operation lasted over four hours, according to Rescue Department spokesman Arif Khattak. Nearly 100 rescuers eventually joined the effort, an emergency service spokesperson said.
A rescue official said the tragedy occurred after a high-floor roof collapse onto students in a classroom rooms below, crumpling two storeys of the building.
Peshawar police chief Saeed Ahmad said the school’s owner, Mohammad Khan, had been arrested and noted that the building was structurally weak, saying investigation is underway.
“Its roof was overloaded with construction on a weak structure, which caused the collapse”, he said. The owner himself blamed recent rains for weakening one of the roofs, police said.
Pakistan’s President Adif Ali Zardari expressed “deep grief and sorrow” over the “tragic school accident”, saying it had “shocked the nation”.
In a statement on X, he extended his “heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased and bereaved families”.
He called for comprehensive investigation and stressed the need to ensure school buildings meet safety standards to prevent similar tragedies.
The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital, said a committee had been formed to investigate the cause of the collapse.
Roof and building collapses are common across Pakistan, mainly because of poor safety standards and shoddy construction materials in South Asian country of more than 240 million people.
In June this year, more than a dozen children were killed in a roof collapse at a tutoring centre in the eastern city of Lahore.
In 2025, 27 people were killed and 10 injured when a five-storey building collapsed in the impoverished area of Lyari in the southern city of Karachi.
