NAIROBI (Reuters) -A fire killed 17 boys when it ripped through the dormitory in which they were sleeping at a boarding school in central Kenya in the early hours of Friday, police said.
Citizen Television said the fire had burnt the victims beyond recognition.
The blaze occurred at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, a primary boarding school for young students about 150 km (93 miles) from the capital Nairobi.
“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” police spokesperson Resila Onyango said. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.”
Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura said the boys were in grades 4 to 8, putting their ages at about 9 to 13-years-old. He said in a statement the dormitory housed 156 students.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
“All relevant government agencies have been deployed…(to) seek the truth on what caused the fire leading to the loss and injury of so many young souls,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said after visiting the school.
“The government assures full accountability for all whose action or inaction contributed to this tremendous loss,” Kindiki wrote on X.
President William Ruto said he had told authorities to investigate what he called the “horrific incident” and said those responsible would be held to account.
Authorities have cordoned off the school and crime scene investigators have been sent there, the Interior Ministry said.
Calls by Reuters to the school’s main phone line went unanswered.
The school has a total 824 students comprising 422 girls and the rest boys. Of these, 160 girls are boarders while the rest are day scholars, Belio Kipsang, the Education Ministry’s Principal Secretary, said in a statement.
Kenya has a history of school fires, many of which have turned out to be arson.
Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital Nairobi that the government attributed to arson.
In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli Secondary School outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.
(Reporting by George Obulutsa, Humphrey Malalo and Sonia Rao; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly, Clarence Fernandez, Christina Fincher and Angus MacSwan)