Lord Have Mercy

"For minutes I thought I had died," he said, describing how he passed out. "But after gaining consciousness, I looked around and saw a friend of mine lying near me."

Qureshi's hands suffered deep cuts when hit by falling debris, but he climbed through a hole in the wall to safety, dragging his friend behind him. He said he believed the other students in his class were critically injured or killed.

The teenager's ordeal was not over. He rushed home but found only a pile of rubble. His parents and grandmother were dead.

A day after the disaster, he sat on the rubble of his school building, still in his school uniform because all his possessions were gone.

"There is nobody who can help me save my classmates," he said. "Is there anybody who can help me?"