At least seven children were killed and 26 others injured Friday after part of the roof and walls of a government-run school collapsed in western India, police said.<\/p>\n
“Seven children have lost their lives so far and 26 others are injured,” Nand Kishore, a police officer in the state of Rajasthan, told AFP.<\/p>\n
There were around 60 students, teachers and staff members in the single-storey building when the accident happened in Jhalawar district, some 322 kilometres (200 miles) from the state capital Jaipur.<\/p>\n
Kishore said the structure collapsed when students were attending their classes early on Friday.<\/p>\n
Villagers rushed to the site and rescued many injured children who were taken to the closest medical facilities.<\/p>\n
Local media reports said the building was in a dilapidated condition and several complaints had been previously been raised about it.<\/p>\n
It had also been raining heavily in the area over the past few days.<\/p>\n
According to local news outlets, the children who died were between eight and 11 years of age, while two of the injured students were in critical condition.<\/p>\n
Television news footage showed heavy earth movers removing debris and concrete from the site.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was deeply saddened by the tragic incident.<\/p>\n
“My thoughts are with the affected students and their families in this difficult hour,” Modi said in a statement posted by his office on X.<\/p>\n
“Praying for the speedy recovery of the injured. Authorities are providing all possible assistance to those affected,” the premier added.<\/p>\n
Rajasthan state education minister Madan Dilawar announced that there would be a probe into the cause of the “very unfortunate” incident.<\/p>\n
“I will get a high level inquiry done today to find out why this incident happened,” Dilawar said in a statement.<\/p>\n
He added that local authorities were making “arrangements for the treatment” of the injured students.<\/p>\n
Government schools in India face chronic funding shortages, with students complaining of absent teachers, dilapidated buildings, and a lack of basic amenities like clean drinking water or toilets.<\/p>\n
The situation has improved in urban areas in recent years but the pace of change in rural India still remains slow.<\/p>\n
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\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least seven children were killed and 26 others injured Friday after part of the roof and walls of a government-run school collapsed in western India, police said. “Seven children have lost their lives so far and 26 others are injured,” Nand Kishore, a police officer in the state of Rajasthan, told AFP. There were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[413,349,800],"class_list":["post-3656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-accident","tag-india","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}