An early morning fire at the dormitory of a girls’ boarding school in Kenya killed several students on Thursday, the police and rescue services said.
The fire was reported around 3:30 a.m. at the school, Utumishi Girls Academy, which teaches high school students in the town of Gilgil, the Kenya Red Cross said on social media. Gilgil is about 75 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. The Kenyan police service said on social media that “a number of students have unfortunately lost their lives.” Several students were also injured, while others were evacuated from the school property.
Photographs posted on social media by the police show the second floor of a dormitory with charred walls and smashed windows, and rescue workers leading girls, still in their pajamas, out of the building.
The deadly blaze came after previous fires that had raised concern about safety at Kenya’s boarding schools.
In 2024, 18 children died when a fire ripped through the dormitory of a primary school housing over 300 students.
Kenya’s deadliest school fire was in 2001, when students set fire to a high school in Machakos, southeast of Nairobi, killing 67 students, according to a 2016 report by a government-appointed task force investigating school fires.
A 2020 government audit found that most schools in Kenya were ill prepared for a fire emergency and lacked working extinguishers and alarms, despite a detailed national safety manual published in 2008.
Brian Otieno contributed reporting from Nairobi.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
The post Fire at School Dormitory in Kenya Kills Several Students appeared first on New York Times.
