A fire ripped through a dormitory at a girls’ boarding school in Kenya’s Rift Valley overnight, leaving 16 students dead, authorities said on Thursday.
The blaze erupted shortly after midnight at Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil, located in west-central Kenya, and burned for more than two hours, according to Education Minister Julius Migos.
Migos said 79 students sustained injuries in the incident, but added that 71 of them had already been discharged from hospital.
Images broadcast by Kenyan television stations showed shattered window panes and walls blackened by smoke as anxious relatives gathered outside the school searching for information about missing students.
School fires remain a recurring problem in Kenya, with the government recording more than 100 incidents in 2024 alone.
Researchers say many of the fires are linked to students protesting strict disciplinary measures and poor living conditions.
“Investigations are ongoing, but the identification of the cause of the fire (at Utumishi Girls’ Academy) is not yet identified,” Migos said.
The tragedy comes less than a year after another deadly school fire in neighbouring Nyeri County claimed the lives of 21 pupils at a primary boarding school. Authorities never conclusively determined the cause of that incident.
“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.”
Kenya’s deadliest school fire in recent history occurred in 2001, when 67 boys died at Kyanguli Secondary School near Nairobi in a blaze authorities blamed on arson.
