Peshawar School Toll Passes Thirty as the Owner Is Arrested
At least thirty-three pupils and a teacher were killed when the roof of a top-floor classroom at a private school in Peshawar gave way and crashed through the floors below, on the count published at 16:26; a later report put the number of children higher still. Peshawar’s police chief Mian Saeed said the owner had been arrested and that “it was a weak building structure”.
The toll has risen all day and the published figures differ by capture time rather than by dispute: twenty-eight this morning, thirty-three pupils and a teacher by late afternoon, and thirty-four children and a teacher on the latest report. Emergency services were called to the Al-Khair school in Dir Colony at 08:48 local time, after lessons had begun. Classrooms on three floors came down, holding roughly thirty, forty and forty-five pupils; the children were mostly aged between six and twelve, the oldest fourteen. One official said the building had been put up on a temporary basis. The arrested owner has blamed this week’s rain for weakening a roof, according to police, who say the investigation continues; the provincial government has formed a committee to establish the cause, and the police chief has promised an inquiry into “whether there were any violations of building codes”. Relatives have accused the school of ignoring warnings about the building. Many private schools in Pakistan operate from poorly maintained rented premises with little oversight.