School collapse kills at least 34 as rescue operation continues in Pakistan

At least 35 people, including 34 pupils and a teacher, have been killed after part of a private school collapsed in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, trapping children beneath the rubble during morning lessons.

Emergency services were called to the Al-Khair school in Dir Colony at 08:48 local time on October 15 after lessons had begun. The roof of a top-floor classroom collapsed, sending rubble through the classrooms below and bringing their ceilings down in turn, creating a progressive collapse across three floors that buried pupils beneath broken roofing slabs and debris.

Dozens of others were injured, some in critical condition, and all of those killed or hurt were aged 13 or younger. Police said about 30 pupils were in the top-floor class, 40 in the middle and 45 on the ground floor when the collapse occurred. Rescue teams recovered everyone trapped beneath the rubble within hours and then began clearing debris, with the police chief warning that the structure remained extremely dangerous.

The school occupied a three-storey building that emergency officials described as having been constructed on a temporary basis. Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed said the structure had substandard roof slabs and was overloaded beyond the weight it could bear, and promised an inquiry into whether building codes had been violated. Rescue officials also reported that heavy overnight rainfall had made the roof unstable before it gave way.

Access significantly complicated the emergency response. The school sits on a very narrow street in a congested neighbourhood, making it difficult for rescue workers to reach the site and transport the injured to hospital. Local residents and teachers from nearby schools were among the first to arrive, using shovels and their hands to remove debris and pull children from the collapsed classrooms.

Lady Reading Hospital declared an emergency and received the majority of the casualties, while other victims were taken to nearby medical facilities including Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital. The scale of the collapse prompted a major emergency response as rescuers worked through unstable debris to reach those trapped underneath.

The school's owner has been arrested, and the provincial government has formed a committee to investigate the cause of the collapse. The Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Faisal Karim Kundi, has ordered a safety audit of all schools in the province to identify potential risks and ensure immediate corrective measures are taken where necessary.

The disaster raises immediate questions over the structural condition of privately operated educational buildings, particularly those expanded or constructed using lightweight or temporary systems. Where additional storeys or loads are introduced without adequate assessment of the original structural capacity, failure of one roof or floor element can trigger collapse into the levels below, greatly increasing the consequences in densely occupied classrooms.

The Peshawar collapse comes three months after four schoolchildren were killed when a roof gave way at a tutoring centre under construction in Lahore. President Asif Ali Zardari has called for a comprehensive investigation and stressed the need to ensure school buildings meet safety standards, with attention likely to focus on how schools are inspected, how alterations are approved and whether existing structures can safely accommodate the number of pupils using them each day.