Parents have been waiting anxiously to find out if their missing children are still alive after a boarding school in central Kenya caught fire.
Seventeen pupils were confirmed dead by the Ministry of Education on Friday morning, while the deputy president said 70 children were unaccounted for, so the death toll could not be verified.
It is thought some of these children may have run into the local community to escape the fire, or were picked up by their parents without the school knowing.
The blaze took place in a dormitory at Hillside Endarasha Academy, in Nyeri county, and its cause is currently unknown.
More than 150 pupils were in the dormitory when it caught fire at around midnight local time. The average age of the victims was about nine years old, according to the police.
The bodies were still in the ruined building when parents were taken to see them later in the day, many burnt beyond recognition.
The sight of the charred remains deepened the horror that they felt. One man had to be supported as he slowly walked back, while a number of women covered their eyes with their shawls and sobbed.
Another woman flailed around wildly, almost as if possessed by grief.
“I want to go where my child is,” she cried. “The bodies I have seen are of big children, my child has died!”
The school is in a remote area. Firefighters were delayed by bad roads, but people living nearby rushed to try and rescue the boys. In the chaos, some went missing.
Angela Kimani told us she couldn’t find her 11-year-old nephew.
She’d been in church attending a late-night vigil when the congregation heard the screams from the school and ran to find it burning.
“When the dormitory was broken, there were some who were rescued, some were unconscious and some were dead,” she said. “We haven’t found him in hospitals, we are wondering if he could be among those who have been burned beyond recognition. It’s such heavy grief for our family.”
John Githogo, the uncle of a missing schoolboy, told journalists that waiting for news was “torture”.
“We are being told some are dead, some ran away, some were picked up by their parents,” he said. “But we didn’t pick our boy.
“We don’t know if he’s among the dead, among the people who ran away.”
In an effort to pin down the children who are still unaccounted for, Kenya’s Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua urged “each and every parent” who had collected their child from the school to report to the authorities, given that 70 pupils were missing.
“We are praying and hoping for the best,” he said.
Fourteen children have been taken to hospital with injuries.
President William Ruto called the fire “horrific” and “devastating”, and has ordered an investigation.
“Those responsible will be held to account,” Mr Ruto wrote on social media.
A team of investigators, including forensics experts, were deployed to the school, police said.
“More bodies are likely to be recovered once [the] scene is fully processed,” police spokesperson Resila Onyango said.
The blaze spread very fast as most of the buildings in the school were made of timber, according to a journalist from Citizen TV, a local TV station.
Local official Samson Mwangi Mwema told the BBC the rescue operation was difficult, saying: “We found the dormitory had caught fire, we tried to rescue – we found some children under the bed and we were able to rescue them.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the BBC it was operating a temporary trauma centre at the school and giving counselling to 59 children.
Hillside Endarasha Academy is a private primary school near Nyeri town – 150km (93 miles) north of the capital, Nairobi.
The Kenyan Ministry of Education said the school had 824 pupils – 402 boys and 422 girls. Of the total, 316 were boarders.
The government would assist families with burials and help with hospital bills, Mr Gachagua said.
He added that a report into the causes of the fire would be made public once completed.
School fires are relatively common in Kenyan boarding schools, where concerns have been raised about safety standards.
In 2022, a dormitory in western Kenya burnt down, with several students later arrested on suspicion of arson. The year before, there was a spike in the number of arson attacks on boarding schools.
In 2017, 10 students died in an arson attack at Moi Girls High School in the capital Nairobi.
At least 67 students died in Machakos County, south-east of Nairobi, in the deadliest Kenyan school arson that took place more than 20 years ago.
