The tragedy at the only secondary school in the village of Belyayevka occurred at 11:50 local time (05:50 GMT). School officials said the collapse occurred while pupils were being evacuated after cracks in the wall had been noticed.
Local authorities said the cracks appeared immediately after windows were changed on the ground floor. However, children were not immediately evacuated from the building.
"When a crack appeared, the workers immediately reported this. The district administration arrived, and decided to evacuate pupils and teachers. The collapse occurred during the evacuation," the deputy prosecutor of the Belyayevka District, Timur Pishpanov, told reporters.
More than 100 rescuers were working at the scene, and a total of 11 people were pulled from the rubble. A rescue official told RIA Novosti that the school registers had been checked, and no more pupils were thought to remain under the rubble. Four children survived the collapse with injuries.
A 13-year-old girl who was on the top floor at the time of the accident told Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda: "We heard a noise like drills. We turned our heads and saw the ceiling collapsing. We ran for the emergency exit, but it was locked. Boys from the 11th class rushed to help us, and smashed a piece of the door. We managed to squeeze through this crack."
The five classmates who died were Svetlana Moskalenko, Anna Ryvayeva, Marina Martynova, Venera Iskhakova, and Gulpas Shagvaleyeva. Komsomolskaya Pravda said the girls were crushed by falling chunks of the classroom wall while they were entering the classroom. The paper said the evacuation efforts appear to have been badly organized, with some children being told to leave the building and others walking to class unaware of any danger.
The district administration said the school, built in the 1960s, would be demolished. A criminal case has been launched and a group of detectives and a forensic team were working at the scene.
The regional governor, Alexei Chernyshev, suspended his working visit to Moscow and returned to Orenburg.
