ENDARASHA, Kenya (AFP) — The death toll from a devastating blaze at a primary school dormitory in a semi-rural area of central Kenya has risen to 21, the government said on Saturday.

Prosecutors said they had instructed police to look into whether the tragedy had been caused by negligence or recklessness, and vowed that those found culpable would face justice.

The flames engulfed a dormitory at the primary school in the county of Nyeri around midnight on Thursday as more than 150 boys aged between nine and 13 were sleeping.

Government spokesman Isaac Mwaura said a total of 19 bodies had been recovered at the site and another two died in hospital.

Out of the total 156 boys in the dorm at the time, 139 had now been accounted for, either at home or in hospital, he said.

“It is a catastrophe beyond our imagination,” Mwaura said at a press briefing at the site.

“It is truly devastating for the nation to lose such a number of young and promising Kenyans. Our hearts are heavy.”

The cause of the inferno is not yet known but homicide investigators and forensic experts are at the school, where media access has been blocked.

The charred bodies of victims, which police had said were burnt beyond recognition, were found in the dormitory, now a blackened shell with its corrugated iron roof completely collapsed.

Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor said postmortems will begin on Tuesday.

Director of Public Prosecutions Renson Ingonga has instructed police to conduct a comprehensive investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the fire and “assess whether or not the tragedy may have resulted from negligence and/or recklessness of any responsibility holders”, his office said in a statement.

“Any person found culpable towards the fire tragedy shall be expediently taken through the due process of a criminal trial.”

The blaze has highlighted the issue of safety at schools in Kenya, after numerous similar disasters over the years.

Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports indicated the dorm was “overcrowded, in violation of safety standards”.

Ruto has declared three days of national mourning from Monday after what he described as an “unfathomable tragedy”.

Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” at the loss of young life and expressed his “spiritual closeness to all who are suffering the effects of this calamity, especially the injured and the families who grieve”.

Many families had been waiting anxiously for news of their loved ones, with one mother at the school angrily crying: “We don’t want the food donations. We want our children.”

The Kenya Red Cross is offering psychological counselling sessions to traumatised children and relatives, setting up white tents in the fields outside the school gates.

Muchai Kihara, 56, said he was lucky to find his 12-year-old son Stephen Gachingi alive after rushing to the school around 1 am on Friday.

“I cannot begin to imagine what he went through. I am happy he is alive but he had some injuries at the back of his head and the smoke had affected his eyes,” he told AFP.

“I just want him to be counselled now to see if his life will return to normal.”

A string of disasters have hit schools in Kenya and other parts of East Africa in recent years.

In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Kibera in Nairobi.

In 2001, 67 pupils were killed in an arson attack on their dormitory at a secondary school in Machakos south of Nairobi.

Two pupils were charged with murder, and the headmaster and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.

In 1994, 40 school children were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that tore through a girls’ school in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region.

In 2022, a blaze ravaged a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Eleven pupils died after they were trapped inside their shared bedroom because the building had been burglar-proofed, government ministers said at the time.