Police in Kenya 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 at least 79 others, with the motive still unknown. Police held 30 students overnight for questioning, per the AP. Authorities said school administrators would face disciplinary action for safety violations after an exit door was found to be locked during the panicked rush to escape the building. Education chief Julius Ogamba said two teachers were aware that students were planning something but failed to take appropriate action, without elaborating.
A full day after the blaze, some parents said they'd still not been told whether their children were under arrest or just being questioned. "We are just here and no one is giving us any information," one parent said. At a hospital morgue nearly 20 miles from the school, other parents awaited DNA tests to ID their children. One distraught father said they were being given conflicting information about the location of the bodies. "They have just been doing some sideshows, trying to prevent us from knowing the truth, but the reality we have come to know is that we have lost our children," he said. "What we want to know is where are the remains of our daughters."
The Utumishi Girls Academy, located about 75 miles from the capital, Nairobi, is managed and sponsored by the police, and many of the students are daughters of police officers. "Investigators have conducted extensive interviews with students, teaching staff, and other witnesses, while forensic teams carry out a detailed review of available CCTV footage," a spokesman for the investigative arm of the national police said in a statement. Ogamba said the school's board of management had been dissolved and the principal would face disciplinary action for failing to comply with safety regulations.
"In particular, there was congestion in the dormitory and one exit door was locked, contrary to the prescribed safety requirements," Ogamba noted. Fires at schools have long been a cause of concern for education officials in East Africa, where classrooms and dormitories are often crowded and firefighting equipment is rarely within reach. Fires are sometimes attributed to electrical faults, but there have also been cases of students burning down schools due to disciplinary issues.
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