Endarasha (Kenya) (AFP) - At least 17 young children were killed and 70 missing after a fire ripped through a primary school dormitory in central Kenya overnight, officials said Friday, leaving relatives desperate for news.

The blaze at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri county began around midnight, engulfing rooms where more than 150 children were sleeping.

Police said the average age of the victims was around nine.

“We still have 70 kids that are unaccounted – that does not mean they are perished or they are injured… the word is that they are unaccounted for,” Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua told reporters at the scene.

He said 27 children were in hospital.

Police said earlier that 17 children had been confirmed dead but Gachagua said the numbers of those killed were not verified.

Tensions were rising among families gathered at the school gates for news, and many broke down into wailing and tears after seeing bodies.

“We parents are in panic mode,” said Timothy Kinuthia, who has been hunting for news of his 13-year-old boy.

“We have been here since 5:00 am and we have been told nothing.”

The cause of the fire was not yet known but Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports indicated the dorm was “overcrowded, in violation of safety standards” and called for an immediate inquiry.

The school, which reportedly catered to some 800 children, is located in a semi-rural area around 170 kilometres (100 miles) north of the capital Nairobi.

“The bodies recovered at the scene were burnt beyond recognition,” national police spokesperson Resila Onyango told AFP.

“More bodies are likely to be recovered once (the) scene is fully processed,” she added.

- Children ‘traumatised’ -

An AFP journalist saw survivors wrapped in blue blankets against the cold, being loaded into school buses.

Speaking at the scene, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said some had ended up in neighbouring homes.

“There are some children who are alive and well, but they are of course traumatised and they are in the hands of those who gave them refuge last night,” said Kindiki, adding that the authorities were still piecing together information.

Elisabeth Nyambura, 35, said her 13-year-old son had been found and taken home while she looked for one of his classmates.

“All he told me was that he saw smoke and they escaped through the window. I am just glad he is alive,” she said.

AFP footage showed the blackened shell of the dormitory, with its corrugated iron roof completely collapsed.

- ‘Horrific incident’ -

President William Ruto, currently in Bejing for a China-Africa summit, expressed his condolences in a post on X.

“Our thoughts are with the families of the children who have lost their lives in the fire tragedy,” he said.

Ruto instructed officials to “thoroughly investigate this horrific incident”, and promised that those responsible will be “held to account”.

The dormitory was sealed off by yellow police tape, with officers stationed at all access points.

The Kenyan Red Cross said it was on the ground assisting a multi-agency response team and “providing psychosocial support services to the pupils, teachers and affected families”.

There have been numerous school fires in Kenya and across East Africa.

In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Kibera in Nairobi.

In 2001, 67 pupils were killed in an arson attack on their dormitory at the Kyanguli Mixed Secondary School David Mutiso in Kenya’s southern Machakos district.

Two pupils were charged with murder, and the headmaster and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.

In 1994, 40 school children were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that ravaged the Shauritanga Secondary School for Girls in the northern region of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

In 2022, a blaze ravaged a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Eleven pupils died after they were trapped inside their shared bedroom because the building had been burglar-proofed, government ministers said at the time.