Fourteen children died after the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday, rescue officials have said, as authorities opened the way for a possible negligence investigation.
Punjab’s emergency service said rescuers found children and a 30-year-old female teacher under the rubble of the private after-school facility. The children killed were aged five to 16 with most below nine.
Punjab information minister Azma Bokhari said preliminary reports showed the tutoring centre was unregistered and operating inside a privately owned residential building under a dilapidated roof. Such centres are common across Pakistan, where children attend extra lessons outside regular school hours.
“If negligence, carelessness or any violation of the law is established, those responsible will face strict legal action,” Bokhari said in a statement.
Workers had been repairing tiles on the building when the roof gave way, a witness told the AFP news agency.
Broadcaster Geo News aired images of uniformed rescuers and civilians using spades and their hands to dig through dirt and rubble in the partially collapsed building.
“The roof was in poor shape,” the uncle of one of the victims told the AFP news agency, adding that repair work was being carried out on tiles while the children studied.
Authorities promised an investigation and provincial police said on X that two people had been taken into custody over the disaster.
Police said they were collecting evidence at the scene and posted video of officers speaking with rescuers wearing hardhats at the building, which was in a tightly packed residential area.
Marryam Khan, Lahore’s commissioner, said in a statement that “those responsible for the incident will be found through a transparent, unbiased and immediate investigation”.
Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief and said he “prayed for the speedy recovery of the injured and directed the authorities to provide them with every possible medical assistance”, according to a statement released by his office.
Roof and building collapses are common across Pakistan, mainly because of poor safety standards and unsafe construction materials. In July last year, 27 people were killed and 10 injured when a five-storey building collapsed in the impoverished area of Lyari in the southern city of Karachi.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
