MACHAKOS, Kenya — Fire swept through a crowded secondary school dormitory early Monday, killing 58 boys and seriously injuring another 28, police said.
"We have a strong suspicion of arson," police spokesman Peter Kimanthi said outside the charred walls of a dormitory at Kyanguli Secondary School near Machakos, a farming town 30 miles southeast of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Kimanthi said 130 boys between the ages of 15 and 19 had been sleeping in the building. A padlock on one of the two doors and iron bars on the windows prevented escape through those routes, officials and students said.
Kimanthi said officials at the provincial school for boys smelled gasoline in the dormitory on Sunday, checked it but found nothing.
Mackenzie Waema, 19, a student who was sleeping in a second dormitory about 100 yards away said gasoline had been spread throughout the other building, and it was burning in the center of the dormitory when he was awoken by screams and pounding noises.
Waema said student-teacher hostility could be a possible motive.
"There was a misunderstanding between the administration and the students. They (the students) had grudges," he said. "That could have brought this calamity," he said.
At Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi where nine of the injured students were taken, the father of one of the injured students said his son had told him of plans for a student protest against conditions in school.
"I don't know if this is the reason why they were burned. Boys who survived said some of their colleagues went to the dormitory with petrol in small jerrycans," said Peter Wanyoro, father of Jacob Wanyoro, 16, who suffered 90 percent burns.
Police struggled to keep a crowd of several thousand away from the dormitory built of blocks of volcanic material. The corrugated iron roof, which had been supported by wooden thrusts, collapsed shortly after the fire broke out.
Looking through the building's 10 windows, all of which were covered by iron bars, reporters counted 48 bunk beds in a building that measures about 132-by-50 feet. No school officials were available to comment how 96 beds could accommodate 130 boys.
Waema said one of the dormitory's two doors was always kept open; the other was padlocked. Those who managed to escape the fire did so through the open door. The flames in the middle of the building prevented those at the other end where the door was locked from getting to the open door.
Several piles of bodies could be seen inside the building.
Provincial police commanding officer Wellington Choka said the fire was reported at 1:40 a.m., 20 minutes after it had broken out.
He said the fire brigade had not been summoned, and police using the school's garden hoses as well as the heavy rain eventually put out the fire.
Most of Kenya's secondary school students attend boarding schools, either government-run or private. Disputes over mishandling of school funds, lack of facilities and quality of food and accommodation are common.
It is not uncommon for boarding school students to wreck buildings and classrooms to protest corruption among school officials whom they accuse of stealing money.
In March 1998, more than 20 girls burned to death in a secondary school fire near Kenya's Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. They had been locked inside the school by the management.
On March 5, a fire caused by an overturned kerosene lantern killed 23 girls sleeping in the locked dormitory of a school in northern Nigeria.