Nine girls charged with alleged school arson

Nine students accused of planning and executing an arson attack that killed 16 girls at a school in central Kenya have appeared in court. Investigators asked for more time to probe the deadly fire, reports africanews. The High Court in the town of Naivasha, 90m west of the capital, Nairobi, said it will issue a ruling on whether the nine girls could be detained for a month pending investigations. The fire on 28 May ripped through the Utumishi Girls School dormitory that houses 202 students. The school matron allegedly failed to open an emergency door, forcing all the students to scamper through a single door, according to investigators. The accused girls have been in police custody for days, during which interrogations revealed that the fire was started by the lighting of a mattress at the dormitory’s exit by using a matchstick and paraffin. DNA tests to determine the identities of some of the bodies that were charred beyond recognition are ongoing. CCTV footage obtained from the razed dormitory showed six students convening in the hallway near the exit and starting the fire moments before students woke up and scampered to safety. Some 79 students were injured in the incident, and seven of those injured were airlifted to Nairobi for specialised treatment. Since the incident, five more school fire incidents have occurred in different parts of the country, and the Kenya Red Cross has responded to 37 school fires since the beginning of the year. No other school fire has resulted in casualties. School fires are common in Kenya, with the deadliest occurring in 2001, when 67 students died in Machakos County, and the most recent deadly incident occurring in 2024, when 21 children died in Nyeri County.