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No loss of life as students rescued from fire at girls’ school in KP’s Haripur
No casualties were reported on Monday morning after a school in the Sirikot village of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Haripur district caught fire, DawnNewsTV reported.
According to Dawn.com’s correspondent in the area, more than 1,000 female students were inside the Government Girls’ High Secondary School Sirikot when the fire started.
Fire and rescue officials, who had reached there with a fire brigade vehicle, had put out the fire after it had raged on for more than two hours, the correspondent said.
Vehicles of the Haripur and Ghazi Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) were also called to the site, which were yet to arrive, he added.
While there was no official statement on the incident’s cause, Rashid, the father of a student there, said his daughter was inside the classroom where the fire started and that it had begun with sparks coming from the roof, hinting at a short circuit as a possible cause.
Dawn.com’s correspondent said the fire quickly spread through the building, gutting the building, the furniture and paper records inside the school.
Mobile phone videos from the site showed huge plumes of smoke billowing out of the school premises and debris from burnt roofs falling as flames raged inside. Dozens of locals could also be seen gathered outside the school.
KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur took notice of the incident, ordering the provincial education department and district administration to ascertain the cause behind the fire and submit a report.
He further directed that all damages caused to the school building should be mended immediately so that academic activities could be continued, a statement by his office said.
Multiple fire incidents have taken place in Haripur in the past few years.
In December, a woman was killed while eight animals perished when a cattle pen caught fire in Haripur’s Khanpur tehsil.
The summer of 2022 saw huge wildfires in Haripur and three other KP districts, destroying hundreds of acres of forestland.
In October of the same year, a fire destroyed records and furniture in the office of Pak-Austria Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology in Haripur’s Mang area.
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