At least 27 pupils and teacher killed after Pakistan school roof collapses

At least 33 pupils and a teacher have been killed after a school roof collapsed in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to hospital officials.

More than a dozen others are injured, with some in a critical condition. Several children are feared trapped under the rubble.

Emergency services were alerted to the incident at the private Al-Khair school in Dir Colony at 08:48 (03:48 GMT) on Thursday after lessons had begun, a rescue official said.

He told the BBC the roof of a first-floor classroom had collapsed onto a ground-floor classroom below, causing its ceiling to cave in as well.

Warning: This article contains distressing details

"The children in the affected classroom were trapped under the debris," the official, Bilal Faizi, said.

The school is located in a building that had been constructed on a temporary basis, with two and three-storey portions, according to emergency official Arif Khattak.

The affected classrooms were in the two-storey part of the building, which did not appear to have a conventional reinforced concrete roof. Instead, it had prefabricated roofing slabs.

Based on the condition of the debris, it appears that when the roof of the upper-floor classroom collapsed, the falling rubble crashed through into the classroom below, burying another group of children under the debris.

The Al-Khair school is in a narrow street on which only one vehicle can pass at a time - meaning it was difficult for rescue workers to reach the site and transport the injured to hospitals.

Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital reported 32 children and a teacher dead while Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital reported one child dead.

An English teacher from a nearby school said he immediately rushed to the site with other local residents when he heard sirens and the sound of ambulances.

Together, they pulled out more than 20 children from the rubble, he said.

"I personally pulled out six children with my own hands. Most of them were alive and talking. But later it was found that they had passed away."

"There was a lot of blood," he said. "One child said he was in a lot of pain. His tongue had dried up in his mouth, [and he was] asking for water."

Sohail, another local resident, said he and others tried to pull children from under the rubble "using shovels".

The school's owner has been arrested, the city's police chief confirmed, and the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has ordered a safety audit of all schools in the province to "identify potential risks and ensure that immediate corrective measures are taken wherever necessary".

"We cannot allow the safety of our children to be compromised," said Governor Faisal Karim Kundi.

And in August, 14 newborn babies were killed by a fire that ripped through a neonatal unit at a hospital in the capital Islamabad, which an inquiry found lacked fire alarms and sprinklers .

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