Fire at School Dormitory in Kenya Kills at Least 16

NAIROBI, Kenya — At least 16 students died and scores were injured in Kenya on Thursday after an early morning fire tore through the dormitory of a girls’ boarding school, forcing many to jump out of windows.

The fire broke out shortly before 1 a.m. local time at the school, Utumishi Girls Academy, which teaches high school students in the town of Gilgil, according to Julius Ogamba, the Kenyan education minister. Gilgil is about 75 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

At least 79 other students were injured in the fire, which was contained by 3 a.m., Ogamba told reporters at the school. Seven students were still being treated at a nearby hospital, he said.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, but the disaster quickly renewed concern about fire safety in Kenyan schools.

Parents told local media that a number of students at the school had suffered head and body injuries from jumping out of the dormitory, which has two floors. One of the parents, Caroline Njoki, told local TV stations that her daughter, a 10th grade student, had sustained minor injuries after leaping out.

“She threw out her suitcase then jumped out of the dorm, landing on the suitcase,” Njoki said. She added that she had been informed of the fire around 4:30 a.m. and had traveled from Nairobi to the school.

Another parent, Jackson Koila, told local television that his child was unhurt but that others had “broken legs and busted heads.”

Photographs posted on social media by the police show the second floor of the dormitory with charred walls and smashed windows, and rescue workers leading girls, still in their pajamas, out of the building.

The dormitory housed about 200 of the school’s 815 students, according to Martha Wangari, a lawmaker who represents the area.

The latest deadly blaze came after a string of other fires at Kenya’s boarding schools.

In 2024, 21 children died when a fire ripped through the dormitory of an elementary school housing over 300 students. In 2021, nearly 60 children were hospitalized after a fire at a girls’ high school in Nairobi. And in 2017, 10 students died in a fire at a girls’ school in the capital.

Kenya’s deadliest such blaze was in 2001, when students set fire to a high school in Machakos, southeast of Nairobi, killing 67 students, according to a 2016 report by a government-appointed investigation team.

A 2020 government audit found that most schools in Kenya were ill prepared for a fire emergency and lacked working extinguishers and alarms, despite a detailed national safety manual published in 2008.

Asked whether the Utumishi Girls Academy adhered to that safety manual, Ogamba said: “I would urge that we wait to see, after the investigations.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Brian O. Otieno and Lynsey Chutel
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

The post Fire at School Dormitory in Kenya Kills at Least 16 appeared first on GV Wire.