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NAIROBI: Seven Kenyan teenage schoolgirls died and 10 more were hospitalized after a fire engulfed their boarding school dormitory in Nairobi early on Saturday morning, a government official said.
The cause of the fire was not known, and the government ordered Moi Girls School closed for two weeks while it investigated, Education Minister Fred Matiangi told reporters when he visited the school.
"We have lost seven students in this unfortunate incident," said the minister on visiting Moi Girls High School, a prestigious government school in the capital.
"We have to get to the bottom of this matter. Police and other teams of investigators have already begun the probe and I can assure you stern action will be taken," said Matiangi, who is also acting interior minister.
“A fire broke out at the school at 2 a.m. in the morning in one of the dormitories,” said Matiangi. He said the school, which has nearly 1,200 students, is “one of our top schools in the country and... (one) that we are very proud of.”
Police are trying to establish if the blaze is linked to a wave of school fires in 2016 when over 100 schools countrywide were hit by arsonists in a period of three months.
Some 150 students and 10 teachers were charged over the fires, with a variety of motives pinpointed by authorities and the local press.
These included vengeance from a "cartel" linked to the country's former exam-setting body, which used to profit handsomely from selling papers and answers before being dismantled.
Other possible motives were student anger over changes to the school calendar as well as Matiangi's tough approach to reforms.
Fires have in the past claimed the lives of dozens of Kenyan boarding school students. In 2001, at least 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.
Lax safety standards and poor emergency procedures have been blamed for some past fires at schools and for other tragedies such as the collapse of a residential building in Nairobi in May that killed nearly 50 people.
The Kenyan police did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Saturday morning.
A shaken 16-year-old schoolgirl, Daniella Maina, told Reuters: “We were sleeping and a girl woke us up and said that our hostel was burning. We were helped to safety by some teachers.”