By Zuko Komisa
11 children were killed in a fire at a Ugandan School for the blind.
The cause of a fire that claimed the lives of 11 girls, aged four to thirteen, at a boarding school for blind pupils in Uganda is being looked into by police.
A girl’s dormitory at the Salama School for the Blind in Uganda’s central Mukono district caught fire just after midnight on Monday.
According to Kampala deputy police spokesman Luke Owoyesigire, a forensics team will conduct DNA tests, before the remains of the deceased children are given to their families.
The fire broke out at 1am local time with the cause not yet known, although school fires are not uncommon in Uganda – many are reportedly attributed to poor wiring, although authorities claim arson is more likely.
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Francis Kirube, the blind headmaster of the school, revealed that some of the school’s less fortunate students had been sleeping in a room adjacent to the dorm and that the authorities were still attempting to identify those who had passed away.
“Unfortunately we have discovered the windows of the dormitory where they were sleeping, the windows were burglar-proofed against a government directive.
“So the pupils could not escape the fire and got burnt,” the minister for people with disabilities, Hellen Grace Asamo told AFP.
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