At least 17 students have died and another 16 have been injured in a fire which took place on Tuesday night in an Islamic boarding school located in the town of Kaura Namoda, in the state of Zamfara, in the northwest of Nigeria.
The fire, which lasted for about three hours, began when minors were sleeping. A witness consulted by the Nigerian television network Channels TV has explained that the fire began inside a study room and that there were about one hundred students who were evacuated. “They thought that none of them remained inside the building. It was when they returned after the extinction of the fire when they saw (their remains),” he said.
The president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, has expressed his condolences for the death of the students of the school and has assured that “security must be the most important thing for the owners,” according to a statement from the Nigerian presidency published in his profile in his profile of the social network X. Thus, it has urged all schools to “prioritize the safety of children at all times” and has ordered the regulatory authorities of the education sector that guarantee compliance with safety standards.
