Kenya school fire kills 16 students

Gilgil. A fire tore through a dormitory at a girls' school in a town in Kenya's Rift Valley overnight, killing 16 students, the government said on Thursday.

The fire, whose cause ​has not been established, 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.

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He said 79 ​other students were injured, although 71 of them had already been discharged from ​hospital.

Footage aired on Kenyan television showed broken window panes and smoke-stained walls, while family members gathered outside the school gates to seek news of missing loved ones.

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.

Cause of fire ‌not ⁠yet established

"Investigations are ongoing, but the identification of the cause of the fire (at Utumishi Girls' Academy) is not yet identified," Migos said.

A fire in 2024 at a primary boarding school in nearby Nyeri County killed 21 students. Its cause was ​never conclusively established.

"The fire ​started from an ⁠upper dome and spread all over within that time," Eunice Mureithi, whose daughter escaped the fire, told the NTV television ​station, referring to part of the school's structure.

"It had barricaded ​a part ⁠of the dome to one side and to the other side the students were unable to come out, but a lot of them were able to escape."

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.