- Five cousins, aged seven to 11, were among 35 people killed when a school roof collapsed in Peshawar
- Grieving relatives recall desperate attempts to rescue children as authorities order school safety inspections
PESHAWAR: A family in northwestern Pakistan was mourning the deaths of five children on Friday, a day after the roof of their school collapsed in Peshawar, killing 35 people and prompting authorities to order safety inspections across the province.
Eleven-year-olds Mubasshir Naeem and Sanan Asad, seven-year-olds Amir Mangal and Haleema Haleem, and eight-year-old Romaisa Ismail were among 34 children killed when the roof of their private school collapsed in Peshawar’s Dir Colony on Thursday. A teacher also died.
“There is silence all around,” Tausif Uddin, an uncle of the five children, told Arab News as visitors gathered at the family’s hujra, a traditional guest room, to offer condolences on Friday afternoon.
“At night, when I was lying down, I opened the window and there was utter silence. The whole neighborhood has been silent since yesterday.”
Uddin recalled being at home on Thursday morning when some children unexpectedly returned from school, their clothes covered in mud.
“It was 8:30 am and I was at home. Around 8:45 am, there was a knock on the door. I told my wife that the children don’t come home at this time,” he said.
“When I saw them through the window, they were covered in mud. I asked them what had happened, and they told me that the roof had collapsed.”
The family rushed to the school without even stopping to put on their shoes.
“Then we didn’t look at anything. We didn’t even have slippers on our feet as we ran to the school. When we reached it, it was like doomsday,” Uddin said.
“We pulled the children out of the debris with our hands. They died in pain.”
Another uncle, Zubair Khan, said the family struggled to comprehend the scale of the disaster as news of the collapse spread.
“For up to an hour, we didn’t know what had happened or what the situation was,” he said. “At first, the mind couldn’t comprehend it. Then we went, saw the situation and learned that the children had died.”
For Khan, the most painful reminders were inside the family home, where the children’s everyday conversations and routines had suddenly disappeared.
“The children who would laugh and scream, who would say ‘We need this thing,’ ‘I am going to school tomorrow,’ ‘It is late,’ and this and that. They are no longer alive,” he said. “Their voices and their talk have ended forever.”
Police have arrested the school’s owner, and the provincial government has formed a committee to investigate the collapse.
Dr. Syed Amir Abdullah, an education adviser to the newly formed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa council, said authorities had launched a province-wide review of school building safety.
“We have already initiated two types of surveys. One is for private institutions, and we have asked the relevant authorities in each district to give us a report within three days on each building housing a school,” he told Arab News on Friday.
For public schools, Abdullah said buildings would be assessed for safety, with those failing to meet the required standards repaired, vacated or closed.
“We have also decided that the education of students already studying in these institutions must not be disturbed, and they will be moved to nearby schools where available,” he said.
