School roof collapse kills teacher, 27 children in Pakistan

PESHAWAR

A rescue worker searches through the rubble of a roof collapse at a private school, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. (AP Photo)

Twenty-seven pupils and a teacher were killed on Oct. 15 after a roof collapsed at a school in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, a hospital official said.

Asim Khan from Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the toll to AFP, adding that over 30 people were injured, with six believed to be in a critical condition.

A spokesman for the emergency rescue service in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said the schoolchildren were crushed and trapped after the roof gave way.

“When the Rescue 1122 emergency response teams arrived at the scene, they found that one roof had collapsed on to another, causing the classroom below to be crushed and trapping children inside,” spokesman Bilal Ahmad Faizi said.

“There are concerns that more children may still be trapped beneath the rubble,” he said, adding that 16 ambulances, two disaster response vehicles and more than 60 personnel were deployed to the site.

Images released by the emergency services showed rescue workers in high-vis vests scrambling to move debris, rubble and dirt.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement expressed “deep sorrow and grief over the loss of precious lives.”

Roof and building collapses are common across Pakistan, mainly because of poor safety standards and shoddy construction materials in the South Asian nation of more than 240 million people.

In June this year more than a dozen children were killed in a roof collapse at a tutoring center in the eastern city of Lahore.