Kenyan police stepped up their investigation on Saturday into a fire at a boarding school that killed 17 boys, as the president announced three days of national mourning.
Detectives said DNA testing was due to begin to identify the remains of the children who died in the blaze.
Kenya’s vice-president, Rigathi Gachagua, said on Friday that 70 youngsters were still unaccounted for after the fire broke out at Hillside Endarasha academy in Nyeri county, central Kenya, at about midnight on Thursday.
The flames engulfed a dormitory at the primary school, where more than 150 boys were sleeping.
The cause of the blaze is not yet known, but homicide investigators and forensic experts were at the school on Saturday, while media were barred from the site.
The bodies of victims, which police had said were burnt beyond recognition, were still in the dormitory, now a blackened shell with its corrugated iron roof completely collapsed.
Kenya’s chief homicide detective, Martin Nyuguto, said at the scene: “Today we want to begin the process of DNA testing.”
The president, William Ruto, declared three days of national mourning starting from Monday to honour the victims of what he described as an “unfathomable tragedy”. He said on Friday that 17 children had lost their lives, while 14 had sustained injuries and were being treated in hospital.
“I pledge that the difficult questions that have been asked such as how this tragedy occurred and why the response was not timely will be answered; fully, frankly, and without fear or favour. All relevant persons and bodies will be held to account,” Ruto said in a statement.
Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports indicated that the dorm was “overcrowded, in violation of safety standards”.
The blaze has highlighted the issue of school safety in Kenya, after numerous similar disasters over the years.
In a statement from the Vatican on Saturday, Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” at the loss of young life and expressed his “spiritual closeness to all who are suffering the effects of this calamity, especially the injured and the families who grieve”.
On Friday, tensions were running high among families gathered at the school, anxious for news of their missing children.
Many broke down after officials took them to see the bodies in the destroyed dorm. “Please look for my kid. He can’t be dead. I want my child,” one woman cried.
The Kenya Red Cross said it was on the ground assisting a multiagency response team and providing psychosocial support to traumatised pupils and families.
Muchai Kihara, 56, said he was lucky to find his 12-year-old son Stephen Gachingi alive after rushing to the school at about 1am on Friday. Kihara said: “I cannot begin to imagine what he went through. I am happy he is alive but he had some injuries at the back of his head and the smoke had affected his eyes.”
“I just want him to be counselled now to see if his life will return to normal,” Kihara added, as he sat with his son on a bench beside a white Red Cross tent where families were being counselled.
There have been many school fires in Kenya and across east Africa in recent years.
In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Kibera in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
In 2001, 67 pupils were killed in an arson attack on their dormitory at a secondary school in the town of Machakos to the south-east of Nairobi. Two pupils were charged with murder, and the headteacher and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.
In 1994, 40 schoolchildren were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that tore through a girls’ school in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania.
In 2022, a blaze ravaged a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Eleven pupils died after they were trapped inside their shared bedroom because the building had been burglar-proofed, government ministers said at the time.
Source: theguardian.com
