A fire broke out at a girls’ boarding school in a town in central Kenya late on Saturday, leaving at least three pupils injured and destroying property. The fire follows the death of at least 21 pupils in a blaze at a boarding primary school in Nyeri, also in central Kenya, early on Friday.
NAIROBI – A fire broke out at a girls’ boarding school in a town in central Kenya late on Saturday, leaving at least three pupils injured and destroying property, the Kenya Red Cross and police said.
The fire follows the death of at least 21 pupils in a blaze at a boarding primary school, Hillside Endarasha Academy, in Nyeri, also in central Kenya, early on Friday.
“A fire incident has been reported at Isiolo Girls High School, Isiolo County,” the Kenya Red Cross said in a post on the X platform late on Saturday. Early on Sunday, it said the fire had been contained and that three minor injuries had been recorded.
Kenya Police spokesperson Resila Onyango also said late on Saturday that a fire at the school had been contained. She did not say what had caused the blaze.
Moments after the blaze was extinguished, police, fire and rescue squads could be seen using flashlights to search for any pupils and salvageable property in the wrecked dormitories, according to a Reuters witness.
The death toll in the Friday fire was initially given as 17, but a government statement seen by Reuters on Sunday showed it had now risen to 21.
Nineteen bodies were recovered at the scene of the inferno, while two victims died at hospitals where they had been taken for treatment, the statement said.
“We saw several children in there that had been burnt,” Phillip Gathogo, a local resident, told reporters on Friday.
“I was just lucky to save one of them, but I heard that he later died. It was a very troubling and sad tragedy.”
The blaze occurred at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, a primary boarding school for young pupils about 150km from the capital Nairobi.
Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura said the boys were in grades 4 to 8, putting their ages at about 9 to 13-years-old. He said in a statement the dormitory housed 156 pupils.
Citizen Television said the fire had burnt the victims beyond recognition.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
“Many children managed to jump out and get to safety, but we do not know how many were successful,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said while visiting the school.
‘HORRIFIC INCIDENT’
“The government assures full accountability for all whose action or inaction contributed to this tremendous loss,” Kindiki later wrote on X.
He appealed for local residents who took in survivors to bring them back to the school so that they might receive medical help and counselling.
President William Ruto said he had told authorities to investigate what he called the “horrific incident” and said those responsible would be held to account.
Authorities have cordoned off the school and crime scene investigators have been sent there, the Interior Ministry said.
Calls by Reuters to the school’s main phone line went unanswered.
The school has a total 824 pupils comprising 422 girls and the rest boys. Of these, 160 girls are boarders while the rest are day scholars, Belio Kipsang, the Education Ministry’s Principal Secretary, said in a statement.
Kenya has a history of school fires, many of which have turned out to be arson.
Nine pupils were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital Nairobi that the government attributed to arson.
In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli Secondary School outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight pupils were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.
– REUTERS
