OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Thursday
AT LEAST 27 schoolgirls have been burned alive and scores more injured after a blaze broke out in a hostel at their school in central Nigeria where they were locked in to stop them meeting boys.
Police said at least 23 students had died, but reporters said the toll was 27 dead with scores more injured, at least five of them seriously. Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition.
The fire started late Monday in the girl’s hostel of the government secondary school at Bwal-Bwang-Gindiri, around 60km southeast of Jos, police said.
A local reporter, Nora Amaka-Dike, told the BBC that the hostel had been locked from the outside, its doors secured by iron bars, when the fire broke out late at night in a small room near the front door.
The doors were apparently locked to prevent girls from “sneaking out” to meet with boys from the school.
A reporter said the burned bodies and charred remains of the victims were lying on the ground on Wednesday at the school. The hostel had been burned to the ground, he said.
Some 165 girls were in the hostel when the fire broke out. The matron of the school was reported among the scores injured in the blaze who were being treated at two hospitals.
Villagers alerted by the girls’ screams had broken down the walls of the hostel to rescue those inside.
A 15-year-old girl who was among the injured told reporters the fire had broken out in a small room next to the front door. When the girls realised they were trapped there was a lot of shouting and a stampede to try to break out, before villagers managed to break through the walls, she said.
A committee of inquiry was to be set up and expected to attempt to establish the cause of the blaze and what could be done to prevent such a tragedy in future.
The state governor and deputy governor have visited the school and declared three days of official mourning. – AFP