A roof collapse at a tutoring center under construction in Lahore on Tuesday killed at least 14 schoolchildren, and funerals were held Wednesday, police and rescue officials said.
Eight other children were injured and hospitalized in stable condition, and at least two people, including the building owner, have been arrested as police investigate whether negligence during ongoing construction work caused the collapse, senior police official Faisal Kamran said. "We are still investigating to determine exactly whose negligence resulted in this tragic incident," Faisal Kamran said.
Funeral prayers began before dawn and continued through Wednesday morning for the children, who were up to 14 years old; most victims were buried in a local graveyard while some families planned to take bodies to their native towns. Ambulances transported the victims' bodies overnight to their homes in Kahna, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Lahore, and mourners included Mohammad Ashfaq, a laborer whose 7-year-old son and nephew were killed.
One parent, Muhammad Farooq, said his daughter went to her tuition class at around 4 p.m. and that his family called him about 4:45 p.m. to say the roof had collapsed and many children were trapped. "Fourteen children were killed, and the injured were taken to the hospital," he said.
Neighbor Mohammad Tahir said residents were the first to respond, rushing in with shovels and digging through the debris with their bare hands before rescuers arrived. "We also pulled children from the rubble, but many could not be saved," he said.
Hours after the collapse, scenes of anguish unfolded outside hospitals and in the neighborhood as bodies were handed over to families; residents blamed the owner for operating classes in what they described as an aging and unsafe building and demanded stern punishment.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the collapse in separate statements offering condolences to the families of the victims, praying for the speedy recovery of those injured and saying effective safety measures were needed to prevent similar tragedies.
Lahore is the capital of Punjab province, where many parents send their children to private tutoring centers in the afternoon and evening, and building collapses are common in Pakistan, where construction standards are often poorly enforced and many structures are built with substandard materials and safety regulations are frequently ignored to reduce costs; a residential building collapsed less than a year ago in Karachi, killing more than two dozen people.