Islamabad — Almost 30 students and a teacher were killed Thursday when the roof of a private school collapsed in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, local officials said.
The bodies of 17 children were brought to Lady Reading Hospital in the city following the incident, in addition to the body of a female teacher, Mohammad Asim, a spokesperson for the hospital told CBS News, adding that some survivors were also admitted in critical condition.
At least 29 people were killed in total after the collapse at the Al-Khair Education Center in Peshawar’s southwest Dir district, according to Asim and other local officials.
The cause of the disaster remained unconfirmed, but a witness told CBS News the building appeared “not suitable” for use as a school, and a local police official said there was ongoing construction on the roof that could have overweighted the structure.
“We have taken out at least 45 children,” district emergency officer Iftikhar Khan said, according to the Reuters news agency.
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Mahwish Zaman, a teacher who was injured in the collapse, told the Associated Press after regaining consciousness in her hospital bed that the school had about 1,200 students enrolled, and she was in her class when the roof collapsed. She described it as feeling as if the sky had fallen.
Zahir Hussain, who lives a couple of blocks from the school, told CBS News he was walking to work when he saw people running out onto the street.
“I rushed to the spot and the school with others to see what had happened,” he said. “Apparently first-period classes had just started … The building was overcrowded. The lesson had barely begun” when the collapse occurred.
He said the school was in a relatively small residential building on a narrow street, and that it catered mainly to children from low-income families. Signage on the outside of the building indicated that there were classes for both boys and girls.
“The parents and families were in unbearable pain. The street was extremely narrow, which made it difficult for rescue teams to reach the site quickly,” he told CBS News.
“The building was not suitable for use as a school at all. It is a very tragic incident, seeing dead innocent children’s bodies left me silent, and it was extremely painful,” Hussain said, calling it a “heavy tragedy for parents and the entire Dir colony.”
“It was a weak building structure,” Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed said, according to Reuters. “Its roof was overweight with construction on a weak structure that caused the collapse.”
