Devastated families mourn children killed by Pakistan school roof collapse

ISLAMABAD, Oct 16 (Reuters) – When 7-year-old Rumaisa Khan set off for school on Thursday she was wearing a brand-new pair of shoes her father had just bought for her. Within hours she was dead, one of 34 students killed when the roof of her school collapsed in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

“I had got her a pair of new shoes which she wore that day after gifting the old one to a cousin,” her father, garment shop owner Ismail Khan, said on Friday as the community mourned the victims of the tragedy.

He and his brother had pulled Rumaisa from the rubble of the Al-Khair Education Center, located in narrow alleys on the city outskirts. They rushed her to a hospital where she was declared dead.

“She left us too early,” he said.

School bags, books and broken furniture were scattered across the site where the roof came down on nearly 110 students taking lessons in three classes. A total of 34 students, all below the age of 13, and a female teacher were killed.

Residents had clawed through debris with their bare hands and carried bloodied children to waiting ambulances before police and rescuers arrived on the scene on Thursday.

Most of the 45 injured children were discharged after first aid, but three remained in critical condition, hospital officials said. 

Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed said the school’s roof was overloaded with construction on a weak structure, which caused the collapse. 

The school’s owner had been arrested, he said. 

Authorities said that an investigation had been launched to conduct an audit of all such school buildings.

Another victim, 13-year-old Mohammad Amir, had dreamed of becoming a religious scholar, his family said.

“We never imagined that sending him to school would end in such a tragedy. We had trusted that the school was a place where he could learn, grow, and fulfil his ambitions,” his brother Mohammad Haroon told Reuters at their home in a densely populated area close to the school. 

They were seven siblings, Amir, 13, being the youngest and Haroon, 24, the eldest.

Haroon had joined the residents and rescuers to pull the children from the rubble, which took hours.

DREAMS AND HOPES LOST 

Pakistan spends less than 1% of its nearly $450 billion GDP on education, leaving many families dependent on low-cost private schools. 

Many of them operate from poorly maintained rented buildings with limited oversight, contributing to recurring safety concerns. In June, at least 14 children died when the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed in the eastern city of Lahore.

Maulana Zakirullah, 38, a prayer leader at a mosque, lost his two sons, Mohammad, 10, and Abu Bakar, 8. 

“The scene that confronted us when we arrived was devastating. Children were buried beneath the rubble, and it was difficult to see anything clearly,” Zakirullah said.  

He said he was asleep when his children had left for school.

“I did not see them off,” he said, adding that he only saw both his sons in coffins at a hospital several hours later.

(Reporting by Islamabad bureau; Writing by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Praveen Menon and Toby Chopra)