9 students appear in court over Kenya school arson that killed 16 girls

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Nine students accused of planning and executing an arson attack that killed 16 girls at a school in central Kenya appeared in court Tuesday.

Investigators asked for more time to probe the deadly fire. The High Court in the town of Naivasha, 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of the capital, Nairobi, said it will issue a ruling on Wednesday on whether the girls could be detained for a month pending investigations.

The fire on May 28 ripped through the Utumishi Girls School dormitory that houses 202 students. The school matron failed to open an emergency door, forcing all students to scamper through a single door, according to investigators.

The accused girls have been in police custody for five days, during which interrogations revealed the fire was started by lighting a mattress at the dormitory’s exit using a matchstick and paraffin. No motive has been revealed so far.

The results of DNA tests to determine the identities of some of the bodies that were charred beyond recognition are expected on Wednesday.

CCTV footage obtained from the razed dormitory showed six students starting the fire moments before students woke up, rushing to escape the blaze that left 79 wounded.

Since the incident, five more school fire incidents have occurred in different parts of the country, and the Kenya Red Cross has responded to 37 school fires since the beginning of the year. No other school fire has resulted in casualties.

School fires are common in Kenya, where classrooms and dormitories are often crowded and firefighting equipment is rarely within reach. The deadliest occurred in 2001, when 67 students died in Machakos County, and the most recent fatal incident was in 2024, when 21 children died in Nyeri County.

There have also been cases of students burning down schools because of disciplinary issues.