A fire that ripped through a dormitory at a girls’ school in Kenya overnight has killed at least 15 students, according to police, while dozens more were injured.

Gilgil police station said at least 15 girls died at Utumishi girls academy in Gilgil, Nakuru county, about 76 miles north-east of Nairobi, according to a police report seen by Reuters.

A police source told Agence France-Presse that 16 people had been killed, most of them children, while 73 were hospitalised. The cause of the fire in the dormitory, where about 220 girls were sleeping, has not yet been confirmed.

The tragedy is the latest fatal fire at a school in Kenya in recent years. In 2024, 21 boys were killed at a boarding school in central Kenya when a fire tore through their dormitory, while in 2017 nine girls died in a blaze at a school in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi.

In 2016, there were about 120 incidents of students setting fire to their sleeping quarters. A 2022 report by the country’s auditor general found that most state secondary schools were not prepared to deal with fires.

The Kenyan Red Cross said on X that the blaze in Gilgil was reported at about 3.30am on Thursday. “Several students have been evacuated and are receiving treatment in various hospitals,” it said. “A multi-agency response involving the county fire brigade, county disaster response teams, @PoliceKE and Kenya Red Cross remains ongoing.”

Masoud Mwinyi, an assistant to the deputy inspector general of Kenya’s police, told local media that officers were searching for pupils who may have escaped the fire but were still unaccounted for.

“We are combing the area because out of that shock and fear and anxiety, many people went out and it was at night,” he said.

Dozens of parents gathered at the school on Thursday morning, frantically searching for news of their children.

Wambui Nderitu told the BBC her niece had survived the fire but broken her leg. She added: “Some of those at the top floor had to jump out, that’s why they are injured.”