Fourteen schoolchildren were killed and eight others hospitalised on Tuesday afternoon after the roof of an unregistered private tutoring centre collapsed in the Kahna neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The children, aged between 5 and 16, were attending after-school tuition classes when the roof of the second floor gave way during what investigators believe was an active construction operation on an already deteriorating structure. Pakistan’s Punjab government has arrested at least two people, including the building’s owner, and opened a criminal negligence investigation.
Drone footage of roof collapse at tuition center in Lahore pic.twitter.com/VzrNOapBDB
— Fasih Ullah (@fasih59) June 30, 2026
What Happened
Mourners gathered Wednesday in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore to bury 14 schoolchildren who were killed when the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed on Tuesday. Police are investigating whether negligence during ongoing construction work caused the collapse that left another eight children hospitalised in stable condition.
Residents and preliminary police findings indicate the tutoring centre was operating in an ageing building. Investigators believe the unfinished roof of the second floor may have collapsed because of poor construction. At least two people, including the building owner, were arrested as investigators tried to determine who was responsible, senior police official Kamran Faisal said, adding that negligence by the owner and construction workers appears to have caused the collapse.
Punjab information minister Azma Bokhari said preliminary findings showed the tutoring centre was unregistered and operating from a privately owned residential building with a deteriorating roof. Such tutoring centres are common across Pakistan, where many children attend extra classes after school.
The children were aged 5 to 16, with most below 9 years old. Punjab’s emergency service said rescuers found children and a 30-year-old female teacher under the rubble of the private after-school facility.
The Moment the Roof Gave Way
The human cost of the disaster was told through the accounts of those on the ground.
Muhammad Farooq mourned the loss of his young daughter. “Yesterday she went to her tuition class at around 4 pm,” Farooq said. “Around 4:45 pm, my family called me and said the roof of the tuition centre had collapsed. They told me many children were trapped under the debris.”
Local resident Mohammad Tahir described the immediate aftermath. “Rescuers arrived quickly, but before they reached us, neighbours rushed in with shovels and even dug through the debris with their bare hands,” he said. “We also pulled children from the rubble, but many could not be saved.”
Mohammad Ashfaq, a labourer, lost his 7-year-old son and nephew in the collapse. “I cannot express my pain and grief in words,” he said through tears as relatives tried to comfort him.
Ambulances transported the victims’ bodies overnight to their homes in Kahna. Mothers and female relatives sat beside the bodies throughout the night while classmates and friends of the victims stood nearby in tears. Funeral prayers for the children began before dawn and continued through Wednesday morning.
The Investigation and What It Has Found So Far
Police have opened a criminal negligence probe. The Punjab government has said that if negligence, carelessness or any violation of the law is established, those responsible will face strict legal action.
Lahore commissioner Marryam Khan said a transparent and immediate investigation would identify those responsible. The initial findings are damning: the tutoring centre was unregistered and operating from a privately owned residential building with a deteriorating roof. The collapse appears to have occurred because the owner allowed classes to continue in the building while construction work was ongoing on the second floor — creating structural conditions under which a catastrophic failure was foreseeable.
Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the deaths and directed authorities to provide the injured with the best possible medical treatment.
The Wider Crisis: Building Safety in Pakistan
Building and roof collapses are relatively common in Pakistan, where construction standards are often poorly enforced, structures are frequently built with substandard materials, and safety regulations are sometimes ignored to reduce costs.
The Lahore disaster echoes a pattern that has repeated across Pakistani cities for decades. Last July, a five-storey residential building collapsed in Karachi’s Lyari area, killing 27 people and injuring 10 others. In 2023, an apartment complex collapsed in Karachi’s Mohammad Ali Society, killing at least 22 people. In each case, investigations pointed to illegal construction, unapproved modifications or substandard materials — and in each case, enforcement failures were cited as the underlying cause.
Bokhari said the Punjab government had ordered a survey of unsafe buildings before the monsoon season and planned stricter rules for unregistered tutoring centres and other private educational facilities. The monsoon season, which typically begins in late July, adds additional structural stress to compromised buildings through rain saturation and water damage — making the survey order urgent.
What Happens Next
The building owner and a construction worker remain in custody as investigators collect evidence. The Punjab government has committed to a transparent investigation and has ordered a province-wide survey of unsafe structures.
Whether that commitment translates into durable enforcement reform — or whether the survey produces a brief flurry of activity before conditions return to normal — is a question that Pakistan’s urban safety advocates have been asking after every such tragedy. Grief among Lahore’s residents has turned to anger, with many demanding that those responsible face the full weight of the law. For the 14 families who buried their children on Wednesday morning, the question of accountability has already become the defining one.
