The Government of Kenya has confirmed that a fire tore through a dormitory at a girls’ school in a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley killing 16 students and 79 others were injured, although 71 of them have already been discharged from hospital.
The Kenyan Education Minister HonJulius Migos told reporters today morning that the fire, whose cause has not been established, broke out just after midnight at the Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil in West-central Kenya and burned for more than two hours.
Images aired on Kenyan television showed broken window panes and smoke-stained walls, while family members gathered outside the school gates to seek news of missing loved ones.
According to the Kenyan Government, fires are common in Kenyan schools, with more than 100 recorded in 2024 and many of these fires are set by students protesting harsh discipline and poor conditions.
Minister Migos said that investigations are ongoing, but the identification of the cause of the fire at Utumishi Girls’ Academy is not yet identified.
In 2024, a fire at a Primary boarding school in nearby Nyeri County killed 21 students and tts cause was never conclusively established after the fire started from an upper dormitory and spread all over within that time.
In the worst school fire of recent times in Kenya, 67 schoolboys were killed in 2001 at Kyanguli Secondary School outside Nairobi, an incident the authorities attributed to arson.
