Inferior building materials cause disaster! Another school building roof collapsed in Pakistan, killing 28 teachers and students and injuring more than 30

On the 15th, a school building roof collapsed in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing at least 28 teachers and students. (Reuters)

A roof collapse of a school building occurred in Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan on the 15th, killing 27 children and a teacher. It is not yet clear what caused the incident, but the quality of Pakistan's building materials is poor and national safety standards are lax, so roof collapse and building collapse are not uncommon.

Asim. Official of Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar. Asim Khan confirmed the death toll to AFP, adding that more than 30 people were injured, six of them seriously.

Bilal Ahmad Faizi, spokesman for the emergency rescue department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is located, said that schoolchildren were crushed and trapped by the collapsed roof. After the rescue team arrived at the scene, they found that one roof collapsed on the other roof, crushing the classroom below and trapping school children; they were worried that more children were trapped under the rubble.

Photos from the scene provided by the emergency rescue department showed rescuers wearing reflective vests busy clearing away debris, rubble and mud.

An AFP reporter saw dozens of people at the scene. Local resident Sher Ahmed blamed the tragedy on "poor quality building materials" and called for an investigation to avoid a recurrence of similar incidents in the future.

Roof collapses and building collapses are not uncommon across Pakistan, which has a population of more than 240 million. In June this year, the roof of a cram school collapsed in Lahore, a city in eastern Pakistan, killing more than 10 children. In 2025, a five-story building collapsed in Karachi, a major city in Pakistan, killing 27 and injuring 10.