Thirty-three students and a teacher were killed when parts of a private school collapsed in Peshawar, Pakistan, according to authorities and hospital officials. At least 19 other people were injured, including five reported in critical condition, after the roof failure at Al-Khair school in the city's Dir Colony neighborhood.
Emergency services were alerted at 08:48 local time. Rescue teams and residents searched the wreckage for children, but access was complicated by the school's location on a narrow street. The rescue operation lasted about four to five hours before authorities said it had concluded. Officials asked the public to keep roads and hospitals clear so ambulances and patients could move without obstruction.
Police arrested the school's owner and said gross negligence was believed to be behind the collapse. An officer described the building as overloaded and said its roof slabs were substandard. Police also warned that the remaining structure was extremely dangerous and could collapse further. Those initial assessments will now be tested through a formal inquiry.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised a thorough investigation and directed officials to provide the injured with the best available medical care. He said safety at educational institutions could not be compromised. Provincial Governor Faisal Karim Kundi said the prime minister had also called to convey condolences to the families and ordered examination of every aspect of the incident, with legal action against those found responsible.
The All Pakistan Private Schools' Federation called for strict accountability and proposed an emergency school-safety framework. Its recommendations included preventing overcrowded classrooms and restricting schools from operating in cramped or hazardous buildings. The federation argued that responsibility extended beyond the immediate structural failure to the systems that allowed unsafe conditions to persist.
The disaster has renewed scrutiny of oversight in a country where official estimates indicate that 46.5% of students attend private schools. An education expert told the BBC that inspection of teaching standards and building safety in the private sector is weak and rarely enforced. The scale of enrollment means deficiencies in inspection can expose large numbers of children to risks that families may have little ability to assess themselves.
The immediate official response includes medical care, a criminal investigation and examination of the building. The broader task is determining whether inspection or enforcement failures contributed and whether other schools operate under comparable conditions. With 34 people dead, most of them children under 13, the inquiry's findings will carry consequences well beyond one owner or one building.
