At least 35 people died when the roof of a school in Peshawar suddenly collapsed on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026.
The roof fell at Al-Khair school, a private school in a congested central district of Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan. The dead include 34 children and a teacher. The collapse injured more than 50 others. Authorities and a hospital official said it was the deadliest incident of its kind in the country.
A Roof of Mud and Bricks
The roofs of two classrooms gave way with second- and third-grade children inside with their teachers, Peshawar emergency services spokesperson Bilal Faizi said. The collapsed roof was a traditional structure of mud and bricks, Faizi said. Some children trapped beneath the rubble died of suffocation, he said.
Mohammad Asim, a spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital, said the children killed or hurt ranged in age from six to 12, while the oldest victim was 14. An emergency was declared at the state-run hospital, and several of the wounded were in critical condition, Asim said.
Ambulances and disaster management personnel from a nearby facility arrived within five minutes of the alert, and nearly 100 rescuers eventually joined the operation. Panicked, grieving parents were already helping when the crews arrived. Faizi credited the rapid evacuation with saving at least 40 lives. More than a dozen children suffered minor injuries, he said. Rescuers pulled out everyone trapped and cleared the debris hours after the collapse, Faizi said.
Neighbors Reached the School First
Neighbors arrived before many others, witnesses said. Zahir Hussain, a resident, lives a couple of blocks from the school. He was on his way to work when people began running into the street, he said. The first-period lesson had barely begun, he told CBS News. The street outside was so narrow that it slowed the rescue teams, he said. “The building was not suitable for use as a school at all,” Hussain told CBS News.
Samiullah Khan, a resident, rushed to the building and helped pull out three girls. His son, a student at the school, survived because he had left his classroom for a drink of water.
Mahwish Zaman, a teacher injured in the collapse, spoke from her hospital bed. About 1,200 students were enrolled, from nursery through fifth grade, she said. Zaman said she was in her classroom when the roof fell and felt as though the sky had fallen. She regained consciousness in the hospital.
Around 300 students were believed to be studying in the three-storey building when the ceiling caved in, with about 100 in the three damaged classrooms, officials said.
Ambulances Carried the Bodies Home
Mosque loudspeakers urged people in the area to come together for mass funeral prayers at the Rehman Baba cemetery nearby. Dir Colony, the neighborhood around the school, was home to most of the children who died, residents said. Families were unsure which bereaved household to visit first. Ambulances carried the children’s bodies from the hospital back to their homes as mourners wept.
One family lost five children — Mubasshir Naeem and Sanan Asad, both 11; Amir Mangal and Haleema Haleem, both seven; and Romaisa Ismail, eight. Their uncle, Tausif Uddin, spoke Friday, Oct. 16. “We pulled the children out of the debris with our hands. They died in pain,” he said. He also said: “There is silence all around.”
Zakir Ullah lost both sons, Abu Bakr and Mohammad, who were in the same classroom. He called the building weak and demanded punishment for any officials who authorized its use as a school. “How could I have known this would take both my sons away from me?” he said.
Warnings About Seeping Rainwater
Relatives said they had warned the school owner before the collapse. Mohammad Zaman, 36, lost his nephews Abdul, nine, and Abuzar, 10. He said he complained to the owner that rainwater repeatedly seeped into the classrooms and warned that the building’s condition could lead to a tragedy. Abuzar’s sister, Samiya, a nursery student, survived because she had gone outside to buy sweets.
Police arrested the school owner, Mohammad Khan, Peshawar police chief Saeed Ahmed said. Khan blamed rainfall for weakening one of the roofs after his arrest, police said. Ahmed described the three-story building as structurally weak. Builders made the roof slab using choka, thin, flat clay tiles or custom-tapered bricks, police said. The structure appeared overloaded, police said, and the building remained in danger of further collapse, so people were moved out immediately.
Police cautioned that the investigation is still underway. Ahmed said a case will be registered and investigators will determine which building regulations were violated. The provincial Department of Elementary and Secondary Education formed a fact-finding committee, with instructions to report urgently. Heading the panel is Javed Iqbal, who serves as managing director of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority, and Muhammad Farooq, deputy secretary for primary education, is a member. The panel will nominate its third member and recommend measures to prevent similar disasters.
Province Orders Audits in One Week
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Gov. Faisal Karim Kundi visited the school, sought a report on the cause and directed the best possible care for the injured children. Every government and private educational institution in the province must undergo a structural safety audit on his orders. He gave officials one week to report the findings. Kundi said the inquiry into the collapse must be finished within four days. No school audit had been carried out because of negligence by the previous provincial government, he said.
Provincial government spokeswoman Samar Haroon Bilour praised the speed of the rescue response. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa education department was ordered to set up district committees to inspect all private school buildings in the province, both owned and rented. Inspectors will check roofs, ceilings, walls, columns, beams, foundations and staircases, and classify each building as safe, in need of repairs, or potentially unsafe. Their findings and recommendations are due within three days. Syed Aamir Abdullah, a member of the provincial advisory council for education, directed officials to review safety rules at institutions province-wide.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sent condolences from Islamabad, called for a comprehensive investigation and said school buildings must meet safety standards. “The entire nation shares the grief of the affected families in this hour of sorrow,” Zardari said.
Pakistan sees frequent building collapses, in part because construction standards are poorly enforced. Many structures rely on substandard materials, and safety rules are routinely ignored to cut costs. A tutoring center under construction in Lahore lost its roof in July, and 14 schoolchildren were killed. Police attributed that collapse to poor construction quality and the collapse of an unfinished upper floor.