Kenyan authorities have arrested eight students on suspicion of arson following a fire at a girls’ boarding school that killed 16, according to the country’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations. The blaze, which happened in Kenya's Rift Valley, also injured dozens of students.
The fire tore through a girls’ boarding school dormitory shortly after midnight on Thursday (28 May) at Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in the town of Gilgil in west-central Kenya. Education Minister Julius Migos said the fire burned for more than two hours before being brought under control.
79 students were injured in the incident, although officials said 71 had already been discharged from hospital by Thursday morning. Students at the boarding school are aged between 15 and 18.
Authorities said investigations into the cause of the fire were ongoing.
Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen initially urged the public not to speculate while inquiries continued. However, local first responders had said several survivors told emergency workers that a student may have deliberately set a mattress alight using a match. The motive remains unclear.
Witnesses said the fire began on the second floor of the dormitory, where some exit doors were reportedly locked. Several students are believed to have died after jumping from windows while trying to escape the flames.
Scenes at the school on Thursday showed smoke-blackened walls and shattered windows as hundreds of distressed relatives gathered outside seeking information about missing family members.
School fires remain a recurring problem in Kenya, where authorities recorded more than 100 incidents in 2024 alone. Researchers have linked many of the blazes to student unrest over strict discipline, overcrowding and poor living conditions in boarding schools.
The tragedy follows another deadly school fire in nearby Nyeri County in 2024, in which 21 students were killed at a primary boarding school. The cause of that blaze was never conclusively determined.
Kenya’s deadliest school fire in recent decades occurred in 2001 at Kyanguli Secondary School outside Nairobi, where 67 boys were killed in a dormitory blaze later attributed to arson by authorities.
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