By Happypal Kenya arrests eight students on suspicion of arson after deadly fire at Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School
Students from the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School take part in parade the morning after the fire. (Reuters: Monicah Mwangi)
In short:
Eight students of the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Kenya have been arrested on suspicion of arson, the day after a fire broke out in a dormitory and killed 16 students.
Two teachers, who were aware of planned unrest, will face disciplinary action.
What’s next?
Kenyan police are continuing their investigation into the blaze, as they seek to reconstruct the sequence of events and determine a motive.
Kenyan police have arrested eight female students on suspicion of arson, authorities said on Friday, after a fire destroyed a dormitory at a boarding school, killing 16 children and injuring dozens of others.
The fire, at the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil in west-central Kenya, broke out in the early hours of Thursday morning and also injured 79 students.
A motive is yet to be established, according to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), a department of the national police.
Police spent the entire day on Thursday questioning 30 students at the school, and asked their parents to head home without the girls and come back on Friday morning.
“Investigators have conducted extensive interviews with students, teaching staff and other witnesses, while forensic teams carry out a detailed review of available CCTV footage,” DCI spokesperson John Marete said.
“Detectives continue to record statements and analyse all available evidence to reconstruct the sequence of events, establish the full circumstances of the incident and determine the motive.“
Parents take photographs of the ruins of the dormitory. (Reuters: Thomas Mukoya)
Education Minister Julius Ogamba said the school’s board of management had been dissolved and the principal would face disciplinary action for failing to comply with the safety manual.
“In particular, there was congestion in the dormitory and one exit door was locked, contrary to the prescribed safety requirements,” he said.
Two teachers who were aware of planned unrest that may have led to the suspected arson will also face disciplinary action.
On Friday morning, parents remained in limbo at the school with no clear information on when the rest of the students would be released.
“We have not even been told about the eight that police have arrested,” a parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear that her daughter could be victimised, told the Associated Press.
“We are just here and no one is giving us any information.”
A parent reacts the morning after the fatal dormitory fire. (Reuters: Monicah Mwangi)
The bodies of the 16 students were taken to a government hospital morgue on Thursday, and were undergoing DNA testing to ascertain their identities.
Fires at schools have long been a cause of concern for education officials in East Africa, where classrooms and dormitories are often crowded, and there is usually no firefighting equipment in place.
Many are set by students protesting harsh discipline and poor conditions, researchers have found.
A fire in 2024 at a primary boarding school in central Kenya’s 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.
AP/Reuters
Originally published on www.abc.net.au — View original
