Peshawar: Nearly 1,400 girl students had a lucky escape on Monday when they were safely evacuated from a school building that was engulfed by a massive fire in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a media report.
Geo News spoke to a rescue official who said the fire swept through the Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Haripur district’s Sirikot village while hundreds of students were inside.
Firefighters along with the local residents began putting off the blaze, he said. The official said the fire brigade vehicles faced trouble reaching the site of the incident because of the mountainous terrain.
Haripur's Rescue 1122 spokesperson Faraz Jalal said there were about 1,400 students and all of them were safely evacuated from the school building, the report said. The spokesperson said the blaze badly damaged the entire school building.
The rescue department confirmed that no loss of life occurred and said half of the school building was constructed with wood.
Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry confirmed that the school building caught fire because of a short circuit.
Chaudhry said that further investigation into the incident was underway and the school would be made functional soon.
Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a restive province which has seen attacks on school buildings by militants.
On the night of May 8, a private girls’ school was blown up by unidentified militants in Tehsil Shewa of North Waziristan district, police said.
The police said the militants first tortured the watchman and later blew up two rooms of the school.
Similar attacks took place in May last year when two government schools for girls in Mirali had been blown up. No loss of life was reported in the incidents.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur said rescue officials took timely action and evacuated the students.
The chief minister said the education department and district administration would submit a report regarding the fire accident. He said all the educational institutes would be reviewed so that such incidents do not occur in the future.
Gandapur said the provincial government would compensate for the losses caused by the blaze.