Roof Collapse

Pakistan's death toll from the Peshawar school roof collapse reached at least 27 on Thursday. Officials said all were children under 13.

The school sat in the city's Afridi Abad neighborhood. Classes were in session when the structure gave way without warning, burying pupils and staff under slabs of concrete and brick, DW reported. One teacher died too. More than 40 others were hurt. Rescue crews carried the dead and the wounded to Lady Reading Hospital, a major trauma center in the city, where families gathered for word on the missing.

"We have taken out at least 45 children," district emergency officer Iftikhar Khan told DW. More, he warned, were feared still trapped beneath the rubble.

Rescue teams, police and volunteers worked into the night. They cleared broken beams and chunks of concrete by hand and by machine, searching floor by floor for anyone still alive. Crews brought in cranes and heavy equipment as the search stretched past dark. No one has given a timeline for when it will end.

Collapses like this one are becoming more frequent across Pakistan, local media cited by DW said. Weak construction standards and poor maintenance of aging school buildings are to blame, many never built to withstand heavy loads or years of neglect.

The pattern stretches back months. In July, three girls died near Umerkot when the outer wall of a government school gave way, DW reported. That same month, a roof collapsed at a private school under construction in Lahore, killing one child and injuring five, according to DW. In June, 14 children died when the roof of a private tutoring facility collapsed in Lahore, DW said. A similar disaster had struck Dera Ghazi Khan weeks earlier. Counting Thursday's dead, at least 45 children have been killed in school building collapses in Pakistan since June, according to figures reported by DW.

No cause has been announced for Thursday's collapse in Peshawar. An investigation is expected once the search for survivors ends.

Rescue teams remained at the site late Thursday night, still digging through rubble for signs of life.