Twenty-Eight Killed, Nearly All Children, in Peshawar School Collapse
The roof of a school collapsed in Peshawar, in north-western Pakistan, killing at least twenty-eight people — twenty-seven students and a teacher — on a hospital spokesman’s count at 08:36 this morning. Nineteen more were injured, five of them critically, most with head injuries. The children were aged between six and twelve. Rescue teams were still searching the rubble, with more children feared trapped.
The figure above is a snapshot and will very likely have moved by the time you read it. Within ten minutes this morning the toll reported from Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital went from nineteen dead, eighteen of them children, to twenty-eight. So many parents arrived at the hospital that the administration asked for police help to manage the crowd. Most of the injured children have head injuries and five are in a critical condition, which is why the number may rise again. Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, said the collapse had “deeply pained the entire nation” and that “our children are our most precious asset, and every such loss is a tragedy for the entire country”. He said the prime minister and the government had taken serious note, and called for immediate assistance to those affected, the best possible care for the injured, and stronger safety standards in schools “to prevent such tragedies from recurring”. No cause has been given for the collapse and no inquiry has been announced. Rescuers were still working when this was written.