Fourteen children died and dozens of others were injured in a stampede as they left their primary school in Kenya on Monday, local police said, with investigators still trying to ascertain the cause of the tragedy.
The police have launched an inquiry into what caused the crowd of students to panic, leading to the crush at about 5pm at the school in the western town of Kakamega.
In the aftermath of the stampede, the police cordoned off the school and took statements from the teaching staff.
Photo: Reuters
Images broadcast by local media showed parents gathered in front of the emergency ward of a hospital in the town, waiting for news of their children.
“We lost 14 of them,” Kenyan Cabinet Secretary of Education George Magoha told Citizen TV. “One life [lost] is a life too many.”
One of the children’s mothers blamed the teachers.
“Those who survived said they were running because there were teachers who were beating them, and that is why they were escaping and fell on each other,” the mother said in an interview with local media.
She said the children were mostly in grade five, and were aged 10 to 12.
Corporal punishment is banned in Kenya.
Kakamega Primary School did not immediately comment on the incident.
“We are devastated by the tragedy that has hit Kakamega Primary School this evening,” Kenyan Vice President William Ruto said on Twitter. “Our prayers, love and thoughts to the families and relatives of the victims of the misfortune.”
The Red Cross said on Twitter that it was setting up psychological support services, as well as a “tracing desk” to help relatives locate potentially affected students.
It said that 39 students had been admitted to a local hospital.
“As kids were going home from school there was a stampede as they were going down the stairs,” said Peter Abwao, a spokesman for Kenya Red Cross. “It’s a three-story building, it’s a classroom block.”
St John’s Ambulance meanwhile tweeted that more than 50 had been injured, including two who were in an intensive care unit.
About 37 had been treated and discharged from hospital, it said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS