A classroom roof at a private school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar gave way during morning lessons on Thursday, October 15, and brought the floor below down onto children in class, rescue and police officials told the BBC, Reuters, PTI and Dawn. The school, which the BBC, PTI and Dawn call Al-Khair School and Reuters calls the Al-Khair Education Center, sits in Dir Colony, according to the BBC, PTI and Reuters, in what PTI calls a congested inner-city area; Dawn places it in the Afridi Abad area. A local official says emergency services first heard of it at 8:48 a.m. local time, the BBC reports, a time Geo News gives as 0348 GMT, or 8:48 PM PT on Wednesday.
“When the Rescue 1122 emergency response teams arrived at the scene, they found that one roof had collapsed onto another, causing the classroom below to be crushed and trapping children inside,” Rescue 1122 spokesman Bilal Ahmad Faizi told Dawn. A rescue official told Reuters that the roof of a higher floor fell onto the roof of the first floor, which in turn came down on students in classes. Arif Khattak, regional director of Rescue 1122, told the BBC that rescuers first recovered 16 bodies and that the operation lasted four to five hours; he described the school as an “unstructured building,” which the BBC explains as built on a temporary basis.
The toll climbed through the day and still differs by outlet. Early on, Reuters reported at least 27 students and a teacher dead and quoted Saeed fearing more, since rescuers had reached just 47 of the 110 students in the three classrooms at that point. PTI later quoted hospital spokesperson Muhammad Asim saying 32 children and a teacher arrived dead at Lady Reading Hospital, and reported two more bodies taken to Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital; Geo News reports 33 bodies at Lady Reading and two at Naseerullah Khan Babar. The BBC counts 33 at Lady Reading, including 32 children and a teacher, plus one child at Naseerullah Khan Babar, for at least 34. AP’s headline says at least 35. Dawn’s latest version says Asim first told it 33 and later said 30 students and a female teacher had died, and that the hospital’s official casualty list shows 61 people brought in, 30 of them discharged after treatment. This desk could not reconcile the figures.
Injury counts vary too. PTI says 20 injured children reached Lady Reading Hospital, most went home after first aid, and three with head injuries stayed in. The BBC cites a hospital spokesperson for at least 19 injured, five critically. Geo News quotes Khattak putting the injured at 45 or more, and AP’s headline says more than 50.
Neighbours joined the rescue, witnesses say. Resident Sohail told AFP that his niece escaped after leaving the building to buy a pencil, according to the BBC; “When I arrived at the scene, I saw around 10 to 15 children trapped beneath the rubble, with debris piled up to their necks. We quickly pulled them out,” he told AFP, as quoted by Dawn. An English teacher from a nearby government college told BBC Urdu that he and other residents pulled more than 20 children out of the rubble: “I 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.” District emergency officer Iftikhar Khan told Reuters: “We have taken out at least 45 children.”
Police blame the building. Saeed told journalists the structure had substandard roof slabs and stood “overloaded,” with a limit to the weight its concrete slab could carry, the BBC reports. “Its roof was overweight, with construction on a weak structure that caused the collapse,” he told Reuters. In comments the BBC carried, he warned that “the building is extremely dangerous and there is a risk of further collapse. This is a case of gross negligence,” and added: “We will examine whether there were any violations of building codes; we intend to conduct a thorough inquiry and gather all the facts.” Farhan Ahmed, senior superintendent of police operations, told the BBC the building “couldn't bear the weight of the students and it collapsed” and described it as in a “very dilapidated condition.”
The Capital City Police Officer’s office said police arrested the owner of the school, which it said ran as an educational trust, the BBC reports; PTI carries the same from Saeed. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi told Sharif by phone that “the school owner has been arrested and an inquiry has already been initiated,” in the wording of state broadcaster Radio Pakistan; state news agency APP, citing a Prime Minister’s Office news release, carries the same account. The owner gave Dunya News a different explanation: he said the school’s foundation went in about 18 months ago, that several days of rain fell before the collapse, and that a second-floor room gave way first. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Secretary Inayatullah Waseem told Dunya that the building stood in a dilapidated condition and that his department had received no information about its structure. None of the sources this desk read names a criminal charge.
Accounts of how many children attended also differ. Saeed put about 110 students in the three affected classrooms, 30 on the top floor, 40 in the middle and 45 on the ground floor, according to the BBC (those three figures add up to 115); PTI quotes him saying 30 students sat in classrooms on the upper floor. Farhan Ahmed told the BBC that around 300 students studied at the school, and the owner told Dunya News it had about 350 enrolled, with about 30 children in the classroom that gave way.
Sharif wrote on X: “My heart is with the families grieving the loss of their children and a teacher in the tragic roof collapse at a school in Peshawar. No parent should have to endure such pain,” according to the BBC and Dawn, and added, Dawn reports: “We will ensure a thorough investigation into this tragedy and take every necessary step to protect the safety of children in schools across the country.” Radio Pakistan says he directed legal action against those found responsible and sought a comprehensive report. President Asif Ali Zardari called for comprehensive investigations and stricter safety standards in school buildings, Radio Pakistan reports.
Speaking to reporters after attending funeral prayers, Kundi said “The first step will be to determine who issued the no-objection certificate to the school,” Dawn reports, and announced Rs1m in compensation for bereaved families and Rs200,000 for the injured. He also ordered a structural safety audit of schools across the province, Dawn says. The Elementary and Secondary Education Department formed a three-member fact-finding committee, including Private Schools Regulatory Authority head Javid Iqbal, and asked for its report on Thursday, according to the department notification that Pakhtun Digital quotes and to Dawn; PTI says Waseem gave the regulator until Friday, October 16.
Others pressed the wider point. Mariam Chughtai, a former director of Pakistan’s National Curriculum Council, told the BBC that for private schools “inspection of teaching quality or building safety is weak and rarely enforced. Many low-fee schools run in converted houses, with extra floors added as enrolment grows.” The All Pakistan Private Schools’ Federation demanded “strict and exemplary action” against those responsible, the BBC reports. Unicef’s Pakistan representative Pernille Ironside said “Going to school should never put a child’s life at risk,” according to Dawn. PTI and Dawn say building and roof collapses happen often in Pakistan and often get blamed on poor safety standards and substandard construction materials; Dawn lists a June 30 tuition-centre roof collapse in Lahore that killed 14 children.
Reading note: this desk wrote from published reports, not from Peshawar. Tolls changed through the day, and later updates may differ from every figure above.
