MEERUT, July 22: Ten children were killed and 40 injured, six of them seriously, when the roof of a madrasa on the outskirts of the city collapsed at 1.30 am after heavy rains. The madrasa, on the Meerut-Hapur highway, was built in August last year.

Most of the 60 children, aged between 10 and 15, who were sleeping inside the madrasa were trapped under the debris and were pulled out by residents and the jawans of the Provincial Armed Constabulary posted nearby.

``I was fast asleep when the roof came falling down on me. I screamed as I felt a sharp pain shooting up my leg and even as I tried, I could not move.

Finally, it was my ustad who pulled me out,'' said Abdul Rahim. Mehruddin had just shifted his mattress to another room as the roof was leaking badly when the mishap took place. ``I groped in the dark as I heard my friends scream. I kept pulling out boys from the debris for more than an hour,'' he said. Nafizuddin, a resident of Kharkauda, said he found both his children at the medical college. ``But one of them was in the morgue and the other is here,'' he said, his voice cracking, as he watched his 10-year-old son with a heavily plastered leg.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.