Dozens still missing in Kenya after fire in a boarding school
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Kenya, families are waiting to find out if their missing children are still alive after a huge fire at a boarding school killed at least seventeen. Seventy students remain unaccounted for. The BBC's Barbara Plett Usher shares the latest. Also in the programme: In Manipur, in north east India, police say five people have been killed in the latest round of violence between two communities; and Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde discusses his memoir. (Picture: Relatives and family members react at the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County. Credit: Photo by DANIEL IRUNGU/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming to you live |
| 0:07.2 | from London I'm James Kimara Sami and we begin today in Kenya where families in the central county of Nieri are still waiting to find out whether their children are alive after a boarding school caught fire in the early hours of Friday. |
| 0:21.0 | At least 17 boys are known to have died, but dozens of others... of |
| 0:23.4 | at least 17 boys are known to have died but dozens of others are still missing. |
| 0:25.8 | The Kenyan president William Ruto has declared three days of national mourning |
| 0:29.4 | beginning on Monday and has promised a full investigation. He said that those found to be responsible |
| 0:34.9 | for the fire will be held accountable. This local resident Philip Gathogo described |
| 0:40.4 | his rescue attempts. |
| 0:43.0 | We saw several children in there who'd been burnt. |
| 0:47.0 | I was just lucky to save one of them, but I heard that he later died. |
| 0:51.0 | It's a very troubling and sad tragedy. A short time ago I got |
| 0:55.8 | this update from the BBC's Barbara Platt Usher who was in Nieri County. |
| 1:00.8 | The last number that we got was 70 unaccounted for but the tracing of those |
| 1:05.4 | missing children is ongoing. It's thought that some parents would have picked up their |
| 1:09.8 | children at the school without reporting that, so they've been requested to contact the authorities. And then there's this suggestion that some of the children may have taken refuge with members in the community who came to the school to try to help put out the fire. We were speaking with one |
| 1:24.6 | a woman at the school who said that she had been at a late night vigil at the |
| 1:28.9 | church close by and that the congregation had heard the screaming and so had gone to find out what was going on. |
| 1:35.0 | So you can imagine the chaos there. |
| 1:37.0 | But she also said that she had been looking for her nephew and hadn't been able to find him. |
| 1:40.0 | The family had checked all the hospitals and they were very afraid |
| 1:44.1 | that perhaps his body was among those that have not been identified and so that of course is |
| 1:48.6 | the big fear. There are a number of remains that are too burnt to recognize and will have to be identified with DNA. |
... |
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