Quran School Collapses İn Turkey : 18 Death (girls), 27 İnjured

[Güven]

Three held over Turkey school collapse as toll hits 18: report
11 hours ago

ANKARA (AFP) — Police detained three people Saturday over the collapse of a boarding school in central Turkey as the death toll from the disaster climbed to 18, Anatolia news agency reported.

The three-storey building outside Taskent town, in the province of Konya, collapsed early Friday after a gas leak from kitchen pipes caused a powerful explosion, leaving also at least 27 people injured.

Search-and rescue teams, helped by specially trained sniffer dogs, pulled the body of a 13-year-old girl from the rubble overnight, bringing the death toll to 18, Anatolia reported.

Three men -- the school headmaster, his deputy and the chairman of a religious foundation that ran the place -- were taken into custody and were questioned Saturday, the agency said.

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People pray near the bodies of some of the victims of a gas explosion at a school dormitory in Balcilar

The authorities came under fire over the disaster amid reports that the building was not properly inspected and that the association running the dormitory was using it for unauthorised summer Koran classes for girls.

A local engineers' association said their initial examination of the rubble indicated at shoddy construction, which is widespread in Turkey and blamed for heavy death tolls after accidents and earthquakes.

"A massacre of negligence," the popular Vatan newspaper blared on its front page Saturday as the anti-government Cumhuriyet headlined: "Ignorance kills."

The liberal daily Radikal quoted muftu Mehmet Ak, the highest religious authority in Taskent, as saying that he was reluctant to carry out inspections at the boarding house because it was linked to an influential Islamic community, called the Suleymancilar.

Radikal pointed an accusing finger at the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, which in 2005 sponsored a law that allowed for those running unlicensed schools to escape with a fine rather than a prison term.

The then president had vetoed the law, widely seen as a gesture to religious communities running Koranic classes, often without authorisation, but the government insisted on the bill and secured its adoption in parliament again.

Surviving students said they smelled gas as they woke up early for morning prayers and alerted their teachers.

"My granddaughter said the explosion occurred when someone turned the lights on," Dudu Gunes, whose granddaughter survived with serious burns, told Anatolia.

The victims included a teacher and 17 students aged between eight and 16, mostly daughters of poor rural families in the region.

One of the girls described how the explosion sent a wall of flame through the school dormitory.

"A strong whistling sound came up from the ground floor. I went into the kitchen with two teachers and one of them said: 'A gas pipe has broken,'" Merve Avci, 13, told Anatolia.

"Five minutes later a strong gas smell took over the dormitories followed by the deafening explosion... We felt the flames rise up around us," said the girl, who escaped with slight cuts.

Source:http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...5KXorrmPn1fIvw

[Danah]

oww its really awful, oh may allah help those victims families to overcome their sadness in sha allah

[north_malaysian]

is it true that Konya is the most religious province in Turkey?

May Allah grant Jannah to the girls...

[Al-Zaara]

Amiin to the adiyya.

May Allah subhana we ta'ala grant forgiveness to the victims and have mercy on their souls. May they enter Jannah! And may Allah help, cure and strengthen the survivors and all of the familes who knew someone there, may Allah give them strength to overcome this. Amiin!!


Very sad news, subhanAllah.