A fire that swept through a girls’ school dormitory in Kenya has claimed the lives of 16 students and left 73 others hospitalised, according to a police source.
The blaze broke out around 1:00 a.m. local time at Utumishi Girls Academy in Nakuru County, approximately 120 kilometres north of the capital, Nairobi.
Local authorities said the fire started in a dormitory where about 220 girls were sleeping at the time. The Kenyan Red Cross confirmed that first responders and ambulance crews were on the scene, though the organisation declined to give an official death toll. Frantic parents were kept outside the school premises by security personnel, according to local media reports.
The school is associated with the National Police Service and is located in an area that hosts several military and training facilities. It remains unclear whether all the casualties were children.
Deadly school fires have occurred repeatedly in Kenya, where boarding schools are common due to the colonial legacy of missionaries and British rule.
In 2024, a fire at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County killed 21 boys. Past investigations have found that some fires were deliberately set by students. A 2017 report by Kenya’s National Crime Research Centre attributed such incidents to exam stress and long school terms, noting that students used smuggled phones to communicate across schools, leading to copycat acts.
Following last year’s deadly fire, the government promised a safety audit of all schools and vowed to prosecute violators.
