“A roof collapse at a tutoring center under construction in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday killed at least 14 schoolchildren,” reports the Associated Press:
Eight other children were injured and being treated at a hospital. The owner of the tutoring center and another person have been arrested.
Rescuers were searching through the rubble after receiving reports that more children could be trapped beneath the debris. The tutoring center was housed in an aging building and the roof of an unfinished second floor collapsed because of poor construction quality.
Building collapses are common in Pakistan, where construction standards are often poorly enforced. Many structures are built with substandard materials.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene after the roof collapsed. Residents also joined the search, using shovels and their bare hands to remove rubble in an effort to reach children trapped beneath the debris.
Hours later, as the bodies of the children were being handed over to their families, scenes of anguish unfolded outside hospitals and in the neighborhood on the outskirts of Lahore where the private tutoring center was located in a house. Parents wept over the loss of their children, while mothers and other female relatives cried and beat their chests in grief.
Most of the victims lived nearby, and funeral prayers were expected later Tuesday.
Grief was mixed with anger as residents demanded stern punishment for the owner of the tutoring center, blaming him for operating classes in an aging and unsafe building.
At least 600 people died in this year’s military conflict between Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.
A suicide bomber killed 31 people in a mosque in Pakistan’s capital this year.
The Iran war sent many homes and businesses in Pakistan into darkness, by leading to blackouts and increasing energy prices.
On the bright side, sexual harassment has diminished in Pakistan as sanitation has improved.
