At least 34 children and a teacher are killed after Pakistan school roof collapses on 300 pupils in Peshawar
Rubble and debris in Dir Colony, Peshawar. A private school roof collapsed without warning on Thursday morning in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 17 students and leaving more than three dozen others injured.
The roof of the privately run Al-Khair Education Center in Peshawar caved in at 8.49am on Thursday while around 300 students were inside, sending an upper floor crashing through classrooms below. Most victims were aged 13 or younger, with 12 girls among the dead and three children in critical condition with head injuries. The school's owner has been arrested and police chief Mian Saeed said the building was structurally weak, its roof overloaded beyond what it could bear. Injured teacher Mahwish Zaman said from her hospital bed that it 'felt as if the sky had fallen.'
Only 47 of the 110 pupils in the three affected classrooms had been rescued when police warned the toll could still rise.
The building was a makeshift structure on a narrow street passable by just one vehicle at a time, hampering rescue efforts for nearly five hours.
One father said his son survived only because he had stepped out of his classroom to get a drink of water moments before the collapse.
