Pakistani authorities have ordered safety inspections of private schools across the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after a roof collapse at a school in Peshawar killed 35 children and a teacher, prompting grieving families to demand justice and raise concerns that warnings about the building’s condition had been ignored.
The roof of Al-Khair school in Peshawar’s Dir Colony neighborhood collapsed on Thursday morning, burying pupils and staff beneath mud, bricks and other debris.
Police arrested the school’s owner, Mohammad Khan, on Thursday as authorities launched an investigation into the disaster.
Peshawar Police Chief Saeed Ahmed said the building was structurally weak and that Khan had told police recent rains had weakened one of its roofs.
According to emergency services spokesperson Bilal Faizi, rescuers recovered everyone trapped beneath the rubble by the end of Thursday’s operation, pulling at least 40 children out alive.
Some children died of suffocation after becoming trapped beneath the collapsed traditional mud-and-brick structure, Faizi said.
Among the survivors was teacher Mahwish Zaman, who said she had no time to evacuate her students when the ceiling suddenly collapsed.
Speaking from her hospital bed, Zaman recalled hearing a loud crash from the floor above her classroom before the ceiling gave way.
She lost consciousness and later learned that many of her students had died.
Meanwhile, relatives of the victims said they had previously raised concerns about the school’s condition.
Mohammad Zaman, 36, said he and other family members had warned the school’s owner that rainwater repeatedly leaked into classrooms, raising fears that the building could become dangerous.
His nephews, Abdul, 9, and Abuzar, 10, were killed in the collapse, while their sister, Samiya, survived after leaving the school to buy sweets.
Another relative, Zakir Ullah, said he lost both his sons, Abu Bakr and Mohammad, who were in the same classroom.
He demanded punishment for anyone responsible for allowing children to study in an unsafe building.
“The parents of all these children must receive justice,” said Muhammad Wahab, a tailor whose 11-year-old nephew, Hammad, was among the victims.
In response to the tragedy, the provincial government ordered district committees to inspect private schools, including buildings that are rented, and submit their findings and recommendations within three days.
The inspections must assess roofs, ceilings, walls, columns, beams, foundations and staircases, classifying buildings as safe, requiring repairs or potentially unsafe.
Government spokesperson Samar Haroon Bilour urged parents to report schools operating in structurally weak buildings, saying the inspections were intended to prevent similar tragedies.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed “deep sorrow and grief over the loss of precious lives,” while President Asif Ali Zardari called the collapse a “heartbreaking tragedy.”
The disaster has renewed concerns over building safety in Pakistan, where poor construction standards and substandard materials have contributed to deadly collapses.
In June, more than a dozen children were killed when a roof collapsed at a tutoring center in Lahore, while a five-story building collapse in Karachi in 2025 killed 27 people and injured 10.