Fire Kills 17 Kenya Primary School Pupils

Parents waited anxiously to find out if their children were still alive after a boarding school in central Kenya caught fire yesterday.

Seventeen pupils were confirmed dead by the Ministry of Education yesterday morning, while the deputy president said 70 children were still missing, so the death toll could not be verified immediately.

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 was unknown by yesterday. 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.