A fire tore through a dormitory at a girls' secondary school in a town in Kenya's Rift Valley overnight, killing at least 16 students, the government said yesterday.
The fire broke out just after midnight at the Utumishi Girls' Academy Senior School in Gilgil in west-central Kenya and burned for more than two hours, Education Minister Julius Migos told reporters.
He said that 79 other students were injured, although 71 of them had already been discharged from hospital.
Students at the school are aged between 15 and 18 years.
‘Investigations are ongoing, but the… cause of the fire is not yet identified,’ Migos said.
Speaking to reporters at the school, Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen urged people not to speculate on the cause of the fire.
However multiple survivors told first responders that a student had lit a mattress with a match, said one first responder, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
They did not know what the student's motive might have been.
Authorities say they are still investigating the cause of the fire.
‘Our hearts and prayers are with the families who have lost their beloved daughters,’ President William Ruto said on X, describing it as an ‘unimaginable tragedy’.
Fires are common at Kenyan schools, with more than 100 recorded in 2024, according to the government.
Many fires are set by students protesting harsh discipline and poor conditions, researchers have found.
Doors on the second floor where the fire started were initially locked and some students died while jumping out of the windows, the first responder said.
The fire broke window panes and left the walls of the school stained with smoke.
Outside the school yesterday, hundreds of family members gathered to seek news of their loved ones.
Injured students could be seen, some limping with bandaged limbs, others carried by police officers.
Local resident Wambui Nderitu said she had rushed to the school at around 4am to look for her aunt's daughter.
‘Fortunately, I found her child, but she was slightly injured. She told me she was on a lower dormitory, which is how she managed to get out,’ Nderitu told local broadcaster Asulab TV. ‘Many of those who were upstairs jumped from the balcony.”
Another local resident Leah Wanjiru told Asulab TV: ‘I heard children screaming… so I went outside to check and saw that the school was on fire. We started fetching water, trying to help put out the fire and rescue people.’
A distraught mother, Leila Matura, 52, said her 18-year-old daughter was still missing.
‘We went to the hospital to see if she is there, she is not there. So they are telling us, she is not around, she is among the missing,’ she told AFP. ‘Whether she is dead or alive, we do not know. I'm hopeless.’
Another mother, who did not wish to be named, said her 17-year-old daughter was in hospital.
‘She broke both her legs jumping from the window. Thank God she is strong. It is every mother's nightmare,’ she said.
The school is linked to the National Police Service and most pupils are the children of officers.
‘When we arrived, the fire was still blazing. It was so big… it took about 45 minutes to extinguish the flames because of the mattresses inside,’ a firefighter, who identified himself only as Fred because he was not authorised to speak to the press, told AFP.
A fire in 2024 at a primary boarding school in nearby Nyeri County killed 21 students. Its cause was never conclusively established.
In the worst school fire of recent times, 67 schoolboys were killed in 2001 at Kyanguli Secondary School outside Nairobi, an incident the authorities attributed to arson.
