A fire raced through a primary school dormitory overnight in central Kenya, killing at least 17 students, police said Friday.
The fire started out after midnight at Nyeri county’s Hillside Endarasha Academy, according to authorities, and engulfed rooms where students were resting.
The primary school serves approximately 800 students aged five to twelve.
“There are 17 fatalities from this incident and there are also others who were taken to hospital with serious injuries,” national police spokesperson Resila Onyango told AFP.
“The bodies recovered at the scene were burnt beyond recognition,” she said.
Police said the average age of the victims was around nine years old.
Several others were injured, Onyango said, 16 of them seriously, and had been rushed to a nearby hospital.
“More bodies are likely to be recovered once (the) scene is fully processed,” she said.
The cause of the fire remains unknown, she said, but an investigation had been launched.
President William Ruto expressed his condolences.
“Our thoughts are with the families of the children who have lost their lives in the fire tragedy,” he said in a post on X.
“This is devastating news.”
He stated that he had directed officials to “thoroughly investigate this horrific incident” and that those involved will be “held to account”.
The institution lies in Nyeri county, about 170 kilometers (100 miles) north of the capital, Nairobi.
According to local media, family gathered outside the school building in the early morning mist, anxiously waiting for word on their children.
Kenya’s Citizen TV broadcast footage of what seemed to be the aftermath of the conflagration, including blackened corrugated iron roofing that had caved in on itself.
The Kenyan Red Cross reported that it was on the ground aiding a multi-agency response team.
It stated in a post on X that it was “providing psychosocial support services to the pupils, teachers, and affected families”.
“Heartbreaking news from Kenya as a school fire has caused devastation. Our thoughts are with all affected,” said Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Deadly blazes
There have been numerous school fires in Kenya and throughout East Africa.
In 2016, a fire destroyed a girls’ high school in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, killing nine students.
In 2001, an arson attack on the dormitories of the Kyanguli Mixed Secondary School David Mutiso in Kenya’s southern Machakos county killed 67 students.
Two students were charged with murder, while the school’s headmaster and deputy were convicted of carelessness.
In 1994, a fire damaged the Shauritanga Secondary School for Girls in Tanzania’s northern Kilimanjaro area, killing 40 students and injuring 47 others.