Roof collapse at a Peshawar school kills at least 33
Nearly all the victims are children aged 4 to 14. Police detained the school's owner and blame construction work on a weak structure.
The roof of a private school in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, collapsed on Thursday morning, killing a teacher and 32 pupils, according to hospital officials cited by France 24. The toll changed during the day: The National at one point reported 27 children dead before the update.
Most of the victims were between 4 and 14 years old. About 110 pupils were in the building, the Al Khair Education Centre, and at least 45 came out alive, according to The National. Three of the injured remained in critical condition with head injuries.
A spokesman for Rescue 1122, the local emergency service, said one slab gave way onto another and crushed the ground-floor classroom where the children were. The rescue took four to five hours.
"The building was not suitable for use as a school at all," neighbor Zahir Hussain told CBS News.
Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed blamed the collapse on a roof overloaded with construction work on a weak structure, according to The National and CBS. Officers detained the school's owner and an investigation was opened, police said. That cause is the police hypothesis: there is no technical assessment yet.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said "no parent should have to endure such pain," and President Asif Ali Zardari called it a "heartbreaking tragedy."
It is not an isolated case. France 24 points to two earlier ones: in June, the roof of a private tutoring center in Lahore killed more than a dozen children, and in 2025 a five-story building collapsed in Karachi, killing 27 people. No source says whether the Peshawar school had operating permits or structural inspections, and that question remains open as the investigation continues.
