Massive fire breaks out at girls school in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, students rescued | World News

Nearly 1,400 schoolgirls were lucky to escape safely from a school building engulfed in a massive fire in a remote mountain area of ​​Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday, according to media reports.

Geo News spoke to rescue officials who said the fire gutted the Government Girls High School in Sirikot village in Haripur district, where hundreds of students were present.

Firefighters, along with local residents, began battling the blaze, but fire engines had difficulty reaching the scene due to the mountainous terrain, officials said.

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Faraz Jalal, a spokesman for Haripur’s Rescue 1122, was quoted as saying that all of the approximately 1,400 students inside the school had been safely evacuated. He said the fire had caused extensive damage throughout the building.

Rescue services confirmed there were no fatalities and said half of the school building was made of wood.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Nadim Aslam Chowdhury confirmed that the school building caught fire due to a short circuit.

Choudhury said further investigations into the incident were underway and the school would reopen soon.

Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is a volatile region, with extremist groups continuing to carry out attacks on schools.

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According to police, a private girls’ school in Tehsil Shewa of North Waziristan district was bombed by unidentified militants on the night of May 8.

Police said the militants first tortured the guards and then bombed two rooms in the school. A similar attack followed bombings at two government girls’ schools in Mirali in May last year. No deaths were reported in that incident.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur said rescue teams acted in a timely manner and evacuated the students.

The Chief Minister said the education department and the district administration would submit a report on the fire incident and that an investigation would be carried out in all educational institutions to prevent such incidents from happening in future.

Gandapur said the state government would compensate for losses due to the fire.