A fire at a boarding school for blind students in a remote village just outside Uganda's capital, Kampala, has killed 11 kids.
Digital Desk: A fire at a boarding school for blind kids in a remote village just outside Uganda's capital, Kampala, killed 11 youngsters, according to the school's administration and police.
"Around midnight, one of our dorms caught fire and burned." "The matron raised an alert," claimed Francis Kinubi, the school's founder. "This was one of the dorms for the young females, and it caught fire and burned down, killing 11 girls, tiny kids."
Six additional individuals were hospitalised in critical condition, according to police. They said it was unclear what sparked the nighttime fire that destroyed a girls' dormitory at Salama School for the Blind in Mukono.
According to Fatuma Ndisaba, a prominent official in Mukono, the victims, who included girls aged 7 to 10, were charred beyond recognition. DNA tests will be used to identify the victims' bodies, she added.
"With the burnt remains, you can't identify who's who," she remarked.
A small cluster of distraught ladies gathered outside the school's gates.
The location was sealed off by police, and military officers were spotted investigating. Princess Anne of the United Kingdom, who is slated to visit the East African country this week, was planned to visit the institution on Friday.
Fires in schools have been a source of concern for education officials in Uganda, where classrooms and dormitories are frequently overcrowded and firefighting equipment is rarely available. Poor electrical connections have been blamed for sparking fires in certain cases, according to officials.
Kinubi, the administrator of the Salama School for the Blind, recognised a lack of safety equipment.
"I have to acknowledge that we don't have systems like fire extinguishers since we've always asked the government to give us some of these gadgets, but in vain," he explained.
In 2020, two dorms at a prestigious boarding school in Kampala were demolished in separate events. No one was injured.
A midnight fire at a boarding school in Kampala killed 19 primary school children in 2008.
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