At least 15 students have died in a fire that tore through a girls’ boarding school in central Kenya early on Thursday morning.
The fire erupted at around 1am in a dormitory of the Utumishi Girls School in Nakuru County, local police said.
Gilgil police said an unknown number of students had also been injured in the incident and that the fire had been contained. Firefighters and police officers had fanned out to control the blaze and evacuate other students, according to local reports.
So far the cause of the fire has not been established.
“It is a distressing and saddening situation,” police official Masoud Mwinyi said, while addressing distraught parents outside the school. Parents, who were woken up by the tragic news, have begun arriving since 5am local time from across the country.
Fires are common in Kenyan boarding schools, with some caused by arson and others by electrical faults. Kenya’s deadliest school fire in recent history occurred in 2001 when 67 students died in a dormitory fire in Machakos County.
In 2024, 21 students were burned to death in a school fire in central Kenya, prompting president William Ruto to declare three days of mourning.
More follows
