Kenyan police arrest 8 students on suspicion of arson after deadly girls school fire

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyan police arrested eight female students on suspicion of arson, authorities said Friday, after a fire destroyed a dormitory at a boarding school, killing 16 children and injuring dozens of others. The motive remains under investigation.

The girls were arrested for planning and carrying out a suspected arson attack at Utumishi Girls School in central Kenya, according to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, or DCI, a department of the national police.

In addition to the deaths, the blaze on Thursday morning left 79 others injured. Police spent the whole day Thursday questioning 30 students at the school and asked their parents to head home without the girls and come back on Friday morning.

“Investigators have conducted extensive interviews with students, teaching staff and other witnesses, while forensic teams carry out a detailed review of available CCTV footage,” DCI spokesperson John Marete said in a statement.

Education Minister Julius Ogamba said Friday the school’s board of management had been dissolved and the principal would face disciplinary action for failing to comply with the safety manual.

“In particular, there was congestion in the dormitory and one exit door was locked, contrary to the prescribed safety requirements,” he said.

Two teachers who were aware of planned unrest that may have led to the suspected arson will also face disciplinary action.

On Friday morning, parents remained in limbo at the school with no clear information on when the rest of the students would be released.

“We have not even been told about the eight that police have arrested,” a parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear that her daughter could be victimized, told The Associated Press. “We are just here and no one is giving us any information,”

The motive of the arson attack wasn’t yet known.

“Detectives continue to record statements and analyze all available evidence to reconstruct the sequence of events, establish the full circumstances of the incident and determine the motive,” Marete said in a statement.

The bodies of the 16 students were taken to a government hospital morgue on Thursday, and were undergoing DNA testing to ascertain their identities.

Fires at schools have long been a cause of concern for education officials in East Africa, where classrooms and dormitories are often crowded, and there’s usually no firefighting equipment in place. The fires are sometimes attributed to electrical faults but are also sometimes caused by students burning down schools because of disciplinary issues.

Evelyne Musambi, The Associated Press