They said the incident took place in the remote Shangla district
on Thursday evening and the children were all aged between 12
and 15.
Nearly 15 of them had set up a cricket pitch close to a sand
rock when it collapsed after a spell of rain and buried them,
the district emergency unit officer Sanaullah Khan told Reuters.
Local rescue teams, later joined by the Pakistan army, pulled
out eight bodies after hours of effort, he said. One of the
remaining children was critically injured, while the rest were
unharmed.
Another official, Bilal Khan, said the villagers who first
rushed to the site were very helpful before the rescue teams
arrived.
The abnormal monsoon rains and glacial melt in Pakistan last
season had caused historical flooding from the mountainous
northern ranges to the southern plains, killing over 1,700
people, displacing millions and inflicting billions of dollars
in losses.
The country's disaster management authorities have already
issued alerts of heavy rains, raising risks of fresh flooding
for the current monsoon season.
(Writing by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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