LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A roof collapse at a tutoring center under construction in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday killed at least 14 schoolchildren, police and rescue officials said.
Eight other children were injured and being treated at a hospital, senior police official Faisal Kamran said, adding that the owner of the tutoring center and another person have been arrested.
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Slippers of the children left behind at the site of an under-construction tutoring center which collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn over the death of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
A man comforts a woman mourning over the death of her child, killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn next to the bodies of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn next to the bodies of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Kamran said rescuers were searching through the rubble after receiving reports that more children could be trapped beneath the debris. He said the tutoring center was housed in an aging building and that the roof of an unfinished second floor apparently collapsed because of poor construction quality.
Building collapses are common in Pakistan, where construction standards are often poorly enforced. Many structures are built with substandard materials, and safety regulations are frequently ignored to reduce costs.
Witnesses said ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene after the roof collapsed. Residents also joined the search, using shovels and their bare hands to remove rubble in an effort to reach children trapped beneath the debris.
Hours later, as the bodies of the children were being handed over to their families, scenes of anguish unfolded outside hospitals and in the neighborhood on the outskirts of Lahore where the private tutoring center was located in a house. Parents wept over the loss of their children, while mothers and other female relatives cried and beat their chests in grief.
Most of the victims lived nearby, and funeral prayers were expected later Tuesday.
Grief was mixed with anger as residents demanded stern punishment for the owner of the tutoring center, blaming him for operating classes in what they described as an aging and unsafe building. Dozens of mourners were seen gathering outside the victims’ homes to offer condolences.
“We don’t know whose home to visit first to offer condolences for the loss of their children,” resident Zafar Iqbal said as he moved from one bereaved family’s home to another nearby street.
Lahore is the capital of Pakistan's most populous Punjab province, where many parents send their children to private tutoring centers in the afternoon and evening.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the collapse of the roof of an evening school building in Lahore. In separate statements, they offered condolences to the families of the victims, prayed for the speedy recovery of those injured, and said effective safety measures were needed to prevent similar tragedies.
Associated Press writer K.M. Chaudhry in Lahore contributed to this story.
Slippers of the children left behind at the site of an under-construction tutoring center which collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn over the death of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
A man comforts a woman mourning over the death of her child, killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn next to the bodies of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
Women mourn next to the bodies of their children killed after the roof of a tutoring center under-construction collapsed, on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/K.M Chaudary)
This year’s class of “Great Immigrants, Great Americans” includes Citi CEO Jane Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Hernan Diaz and Cristina Rivera Garza, and fashion designer Gabriela Hearst. The newly renamed Andrew Carnegie Foundation announced the honorees Tuesday as immigration advocates expressed concern about the future of U.S. immigration policy following last week’s Supreme Court rulings.
Foundation President Dame Louise Richardson said the awards, launched in 2006, have never been meant to be political. Earlier this month, the foundation changed its name from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to emphasize its nonprofit status and connection to famed industrialist Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant.
“We’re not articulating it in response to this moment,” Richardson told The Associated Press. “But it seems especially important at this moment that we celebrate immigrants and their contributions and also that we present a view of immigrants different from the ones so often portrayed in the media.”
The immigration debate continues at the highest levels of power, as President Donald Trump’s administration executes his agenda to increase immigration enforcement and reduce the numbers of legal immigrants and asylum seekers in the country. On the other side, Pope Leo XIV said, “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border,” as he visited a once-notorious epicenter of the European migration debate in Spain earlier this month.
Richardson — a naturalized American citizen, born in Ireland — said the entire issue has “become so fraught, especially with the movement against legal immigration and, in particular, the visas for highly skilled people.”
“That just strikes me as an act of self-harm on a national level,” she added, “because so many of these people are the engines of the economy.”
Honoree Dr. Iman Abuzeid, co-founder and CEO of the artificial intelligence-driven healthcare career platform Incredible Health, sees the award as recognition not just for her accomplishments, but for everyone who helped her along the way.
“And if my story makes it feel like it’s more possible for someone else, then that’s probably the part that I care about the most,” added the native of Sudan, who now lives in San Francisco.
Abuzeid said she specifically chose to emigrate to the United States after living in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and completing medical school in England.
“It is the best country for what I’m trying to do,” she said. “I think if you’re ambitious and you’re willing to work hard and you’ve got some skills, it is probably the best country in the world for you.”
Being an immigrant, Abuzeid said, has given her the drive to take on risk and bet on her own abilities. It has also influenced her to build Incredible Health in a way that balances the needs of employers looking to hire health care workers with the career needs of the workers, about 20% of whom are immigrants.
“I think being from Sudan does make me a little bit more attuned to topics like bias and diversity,” she said. “Because we’re operating a marketplace at scale, we can see these patterns in our data where workers of certain last names were seeing bias against them. … So when we removed that, we were able to improve that part of the marketplace.”
Honoree Cristian Măcelaru, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, said immigration offers both the immigrant and their new home country a chance to improve their lives.
“This is an opportunity we should hold dear,” the native of Romania said. “It really makes for a unique kind of country.”
It also creates a unique artistic point of view, said Măcelaru, who moved to Michigan to study music at Interlochen Arts Academy when he was 16.
“I’ve met so many incredible people that were supportive of my arrival to the United States and embracing of who I was,” he said. “But, at the same time, there is that nostalgia for what you’ve left behind that accompanies you on a daily basis. … The immigrant experience never leaves you.”
Măcelaru, who conducted the Orchestre National de France during the Paris Olympics opening ceremony viewed by more than a billion people in 2024, said culture becomes stronger when it appreciates the strengths of others.
“I think all of us actually love the cultures of different places,” said Măcelaru, who makes a point of diversifying the music presented by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. “It doesn’t matter where we are on the planet, you end up loving music that is from a different place. You end up loving food that is from a different country.”
Honoree Gregory Nagy, Harvard University’s Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and a professor of Comparative Literature, takes it a step further.
“To have an influx of new cultures and new ways of looking at things — that variety is the human fabric,” said the native of Hungary who emigrated with his family as a boy following World War II. They first went to Canada, and then to the United States when his father was invited to become a professor of classical piano at Indiana University. “I’m just awestruck by how important the melting pot is.”
Nagy, who prides himself on being “a friendly Midwesterner” after spending his formative years in Bloomington, Indiana, uses the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s thoughts on repetition — how a person changes an idea even if they only repeat it — to back up that belief.
But he also supports it with his ongoing teaching. Nagy’s class on “The Ancient Greek Hero,” which he has taught for more than 50 years and is currently the longest-running class at Harvard, continues to change with the times, while remaining true to its subject matter.
He has studied how “The Oath of the Ephebes,” from more than 2,400 years ago, connects the importance of environmentalism to being a good citizen. He says the ancient Greek idea of heroism is closer to modern comic book heroes than to the idealized, perfect versions many Americans hold dear.
That evolution is driven by young people, as reflected in the election of Péter Magyar as prime minister of Nagy’s beloved Hungary in April, the social changes that followed, and the new perspectives brought by immigration, Nagy said.
“I was very fortunate to become an immigrant,” he said. “And I was lucky enough to achieve puberty in Indiana, so that Americanizes you very well.”
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
FILE - Chief conductor Cristian Macelaru , center, performs with the WDR symphony orchestra at the traditional President's charity concert at the symphonic concert hall Koelner Philharmonie in Cologne, Germany, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, Pool, File)
FILE - Citi CEO Jane Fraser speaks during the APEC CEO Summit, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
