PESHAWAR: The roof of a school collapsed in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, killing a teacher and 32 students, mostly aged under 14, health officials said on Thursday. Twenty more students were taken to hospital, three of them with severe head injuries. A senior Peshawar-based official said initial reports suggested the collapse was due to "weak infrastructure", adding that the school owner had been detained.
A spokesman for the emergency rescue service in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said rescue teams found that "one roof had collapsed onto another, causing the classroom below to be crushed and trapping children inside". Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed "deep sorrow and grief over the loss of precious lives".
Roof and building collapses are common in Pakistan, largely due to poor safety standards and substandard construction materials. In June, more than a dozen children were killed when a roof collapsed at a tutoring centre in the eastern city of Lahore. — AFP
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