NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan prosecutors have prepared murder charges against students accused of starting a dormitory fire in May that killed 16 girls at a secondary school, officials said on Tuesday.
The May 28 fire tore through a dormitory housing 202 students at the Utumishi Girls School in Gilgil, about 100 kilometres north of Nairobi. Students were forced to flee through a single doorway when the school matron failed to open an emergency exit. Sixteen pupils, aged between 15 and 18, died and 132 were injured in the blaze, which broke out shortly after midnight.
Police later arrested nine suspects and said they started the fire by setting a mattress ablaze near an exit. The suspects, who are being held in custody for a 21-day period of investigation, will be formally charged in court, Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said. The charged suspects will each face 16 counts of murder.
Kenya’s Education Ministry has also suspended the principal of Utumishi Girls School for failing to comply with school fire safety regulations. The ministry said that it had closed more than 300 schools following a 2024 fire tragedy that killed 21 boys in central Kenya.
The Kenya Red Cross reported that it had responded to 37 school fire incidents since the beginning of the year. Officials sometimes cite overcrowding and locked emergency exits as major factors in the high number of casualties.
Kenya has a long history of deadly school fires. The country’s deadliest school fire in recent history occurred in 2001 when 67 students died in a dormitory fire in Machakos County.
