Nairobi, Kenya
Kenyan authorities have arrested eight students on suspicion of arson over a fire at a girls’ boarding school that killed 16 students, police stated on Friday.
The fire on the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil in west-central Kenya broke out in the early hours of Thursday and in addition injured 79 students.
Fires are frequent at Kenyan faculties, with many set by students protesting harsh self-discipline and poor situations, researchers have discovered.
“Preliminary investigations have identified eight students as persons of interest in connection with the planning and execution of the suspected arson attack,” the police’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations stated in a press release.
“The eight girls have since been arrested and are currently in police custody.”
Education Minister Julius Ogamba instructed a information convention that preliminary investigations discovered that two lecturers at the secondary school had been knowledgeable of the students’ alleged plans however didn’t act to cease them.
The school additionally failed to look at security guidelines, he stated, pointing to overcrowding in the dormitories and an emergency exit that was locked throughout the fire.
As a end result, the federal government has disbanded the school’s board of administration and can take applicable authorized and disciplinary motion in opposition to any employees discovered to have uncared for their duties, Ogamba stated.
A fire in 2024 at a main boarding school in central Kenya’s Nyeri County killed 21 students. Its trigger was by no means conclusively established.
In the worst school fire of latest occasions, 67 schoolboys have been killed in 2001 at Kyanguli Secondary School exterior Nairobi, an incident the authorities attributed to arson.