At least 17 young boys were killed and 70 missing after a fire ripped through a primary school dormitory in central Kenya, officials said Friday, leaving relatives desperate for news of their loved ones.
The fire broke out around midnight at the Hillside Andarasha Academy in Nyeri County, engulfing rooms where more than 150 boys were sleeping.
“We still have 70 children missing – that doesn’t mean they are dead or injured … the truth is they are missing,” Vice President Rigathi Gachagua told reporters at the scene, adding that 27 children were in hospital.
Police had earlier said that the deaths of 17 children had been confirmed.
“The bodies recovered at the scene were so burnt they were beyond identification,” national police spokeswoman Rasila Onyango told AFP.
But Gachagua said the death toll had not been confirmed, and urged relatives and community members to help locate the missing.
He described the scene as “appalling” and said intensive investigative work, using DNA, would be needed to identify the victims.
The government said the hostel housed boys from classes four to eight, meaning the victims were aged between nine and 12 or 13.
Tensions were running high among families who had gathered at the school to hear the news, and many of them broke down and cried when officials took them to show the charred bodies in the destroyed dormitory.
“Please find my child. He can’t be dead. I want my child,” a woman said in a distressed voice as she left the school.
‘Panic Mode’
The cause of the fire is not yet known, but Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports suggested the dormitory was “overcrowded, which violated safety standards” and called for an immediate investigation.
“We parents are very panicked,” said Timothy Kinuthia, who is searching for his 13-year-old son.
“We have been here since 5 a.m. and we have not been told anything.”
AFP footage showed the dormitory’s blackened facade, with its iron roof completely collapsed.
The destroyed building was sealed off with yellow police tape and officers were posted at all entry points.
The school, which reportedly has about 800 children, is located in a semi-rural area about 170 kilometres (100 miles) north of the capital, Nairobi.
An AFP journalist saw survivors being packed into school buses, wrapped in blue blankets to protect them from the cold.
Alice Wanjiku said she came from Nairobi looking for her orphaned nephew.
“We haven’t heard anything since morning. I will camp here until I find my baby. He is the joy of our family and I hope I find him.”
‘Traumatised’ children
Speaking at the scene, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said some students fled to neighbouring houses.
“Some of the children are alive and well, but they are definitely in shock and they are in the hands of the people who sheltered them last night,” Kindiki said.
President William Ruto, who is currently in Beijing for the China-Africa Summit, expressed his condolences in a post on Xbox One.
He directed authorities to “thoroughly investigate this horrific incident”, and promised that those responsible would “be held accountable”.
The Kenyan Red Cross said it was assisting the multi-agency response team and providing psychological support.
There have been several school fires in Kenya and East Africa.
In 2016, nine students died in a fire at a girls’ high school in Nairobi’s sprawling slum area of Kibera.
In 2001, 67 students were killed in an arson attack on a dormitory at David Mutiso’s Kayanguli Mixed Secondary School in Kenya’s southern Machakos district.
Two students were charged with manslaughter and the school’s headmaster and deputy headmaster were found guilty of negligence.
In 1994, 40 school children were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire at the Shuritanga Girls Secondary School in the northern region of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
In 2022, a fire broke out at a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Government ministers at the time said a room had been built into the building to protect it from thieves, trapping eleven students inside, leading to their deaths.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
