NEW DELHI - The phones wouldn’t stop ringing and many students failed to turn up Monday at Delhi’s Bluebells International School, just a few metres from the Metro Rail construction site that has been hit by accidents on two consecutive days.

Despite assurances from the south Delhi school authorities that adequate safety measures have been taken, attendance was low. Frantic parents kept calling up to ask if the school was open, as just a day earlier an elevated section of the Metro track under construction collapsed at there, killing six people, injuring 15 and shocking Delhi residents.

Indu Ghai, the general administrator of the school, admitted that “attendance is low”.

“The school is functioning normally today. We are ensuring complete safety for our students and we are seeing to it that no student steps out of the school premises unattended. However, I think it is the safety concern of the parents because of which the attendance of students is lower than usual,” said Ghai.

“But we have closed down gate numbers one and two of the school premises,” she said. Both gates are right next to the site where two accidents have taken place.

On Monday morning, when the debris of Sunday’s crash of an elevated track was being cleared, four cranes along with the launcher holding up the concrete track crashed into adjoining shops, injuring five people.

“We have opened gate number three instead. Entrance and exit of any student, teacher or staff is taking place from there,” Ghai said. This gate bypasses the accident site and opens at the opposite end.

A security guard at the school said: “The school telephone has been ringing constantly.”

The Lady Sri Ram College for Women, which is just across the site, remained closed. The new session of the college starts July 15.

Sunday’s accident took place around 5 a.m. at the construction site at Zamrudpur near Amar Colony in south Delhi.

This Metro Rail between the Central Secretariat and Badarpur on Haryana border was slated to be open September 2010, a month before the Commonwealth Games next year.