Not less than 17 kids died after a hearth ripped via their main college dormitory in a single day in central Kenya, police mentioned Friday, September 6. The blaze in Nyeri County’s Hillside Endarasha Academy broke out at round midnight, police mentioned, engulfing rooms the place the kids had been sleeping. The first college caters to some 800 pupils, aged between roughly 5 and 12.
“There are 17 fatalities from this incident and there are additionally others who had been taken to hospital with severe accidents,” nationwide police spokesperson Resila Onyango instructed Agence France-Presse (AFP). “The our bodies recovered on the scene had been burnt past recognition,” she mentioned.
Police mentioned the typical age of the victims was round 9 years previous. A number of others had been injured, Onyango mentioned, 16 of them severely, and had been rushed to a close-by hospital. “Extra our bodies are prone to be recovered as soon as [the] scene is absolutely processed,” she mentioned. The reason for the fireplace stays unknown, she mentioned, however an investigation had been launched.
President William Ruto expressed his condolences for these killed. “Our ideas are with the households of the kids who’ve misplaced their lives within the hearth tragedy,” he mentioned in a submit on X. “That is devastating information.” He mentioned he had instructed officers to “completely examine this horrific incident”, and promised that these accountable might be “held to account.”
The college is positioned round 170 kilometers north of the capital Nairobi, in Nyeri county. The Kenyan Crimson Cross mentioned it was on the bottom helping a multi-agency response group. In a submit on X, it mentioned it was “offering psychosocial help providers to the pupils, academics and affected households”.
Lethal blazes
There have been quite a few college fires in Kenya and throughout East Africa. In 2016, 9 college students had been killed by a hearth at a women’ highschool within the Kibera neighborhood of Nairobi. In 2001, 67 pupils had been killed by an arson assault on their dormitory on the Kyanguli Combined Secondary Faculty David Mutiso in Kenya’s southern Machakos district. Two pupils had been charged with the homicide, and the headmaster and deputy of the varsity had been convicted of negligence. In 1994, 40 college kids had been burned alive and 47 injured in a hearth that ravaged the Shauritanga Secondary Faculty for Women within the northern area of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
