Princess Anne to pay tribute to 11 children burned to death as they slept at school for deafblind youngsters in Uganda that was preparing for her to visit later this week
- A fire ripped through the Salama School for the Blind in the Mukono district east of Ugandan capital today
- The blaze started at around 1am local time on Monday, trapping kids who were sleeping in dormitories
- Grieving parents were seen crying near the school while forensic teams inspected the charred building
- Princess Anne is due to visit the school during a tour of Uganda on Friday to pay tribute to the children
Princess Anne will visit a school in Uganda where 11 children died this week in a tragic fire.
The royal was due to visit the school outside the capital, Kampala on Friday during her trip to the east African country.
The school, the Salama School for the Blind in the Mukono district, east of the capital Kampala, was badly damaged.
A further six people were badly injured in the blaze.
School principal Francis Kirubi told The Times: ‘We submitted profiles of every person who was to attend the princess’ visit.
‘When you look at the hostel, fire started from the side without power connectivity, making it hard to say that it was sparked by any power fault. But anyway, leave this to the police to investigate and find out what exactly happened.’
‘The cause of the fire is currently unknown but so far 11 deaths as a result of the fire have been confirmed while six are in critical condition and admitted (to hospital),’ the Ugandan Police Force said on Twitter.
The disaster occurred at about 1am on Monday at the Salama School for the Blind in the Mukono district, east of the capital Kampala.
Police said an investigation had been launched into the cause of the inferno and more details would be released later.
‘Most of the dead are children at the school and our sympathies go to the parents,’ Internal Affairs Minister General Kahinda Otafiire said, adding that the school has been cordoned off as a ‘crime scene’ and vowing there would be a full investigation.
‘As government we shall go to the root cause of the fire and if there are any culprits they will be apprehended and the law will take its course,’ he declared.
Kirube, who is also blind, said the flames swept through the dormitory as the pupils slept.
Images from the scene of the blaze showed a charred but still largely intact building where the fire broke out, its window frames and door blackened and the corrugated roof damaged.
Forensic teams were seen in white protective gear at the school, while grieving parents were pictured weeping as they sat on the ground nearby.
Princess Anne, pictured yesterday in Southwestern Uganda is due to visit the school where 11 children died on Friday
Police say at least eleven people died including students after a fire broke out in the middle of the night at a school for the blind in Uganda. Six others were taken to hospital in critical condition
A girl is comforted by her father at the scene of a fire at Salama School for the Blind in Mukono District
A woman reacts after learning about the death of her granddaughter at the scene of a fire at Salama School for the Blind in Mukono District, Uganda, 25 October 2022
Parents gather at the Herona hospital where injured students receive treatment following a fire in a dormitory building at the Salama School for the Blind at the Herona Hospital in Kisoga Town, near Kampala, Uganda October 25, 2022
Richard Muhimba, the distraught father of one of the dead children, told AFP: ‘No words can explain the pain I am going through.
‘I visited my child on Saturday, he was in good health and in less than three days he is gone… Please give me time to go through this pain,’ said Muhimba, before hanging up.
A friend told AFP that the child was aged 15 and that Muhimba was a father of five.
Salama was built in April 1999 by the local government in Mukono and caters for children and young adults between the ages of six to 25.
Princess Anne, the sister of King Charles III, had been due to visit the school during her trip this week to Uganda, which marked its 60th anniversary of independence from Britain earlier this month.
Kinubi, the Salama School for the Blind administrator, acknowledged there was a lack of safety equipment on the premises.
‘I have to admit that we do not have systems like fire extinguishers because we have always been appealing to government to provide us with some of these gadgets, but in vain,’ he said.
Students injured when fire gutted down a dormitory building at the Salama School for the Blind, are received for treatment at the Herona Hospital in Kisoga Town, near Kampala
Parents react at the Salama School for the Blind following a fire in a dormitory building in Luga Village, Ntanzi Parish of Mukono District, near Kampala
Police forensic experts investigate the scene of a fire at Salama School for the Blind in Mukono District, Uganda, 25 October 2022
The East African nation has suffered a string of deadly school fires in recent years, a cause of concern for education officials in a country where classrooms and dormitories are often crowded, and there’s usually no firefighting equipment in place.
In November 2018, 11 boys perished and another 20 suffered severe burns in a suspected arson attack at a boarding school in southern Uganda.
In April 2008, 18 schoolgirls burned to death along with one adult when a fire engulfed their dormitory at a junior school near the Ugandan capital.
And in March 2006, at least 13 children were killed and several hurt when fire razed an Islamic school in western Uganda. In July the same year, six children died in a similar fire in the east.
Officials have cited poor electrical connections as sparking blazes in some cases.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Kampala have said six school children in the Ugandan capital have tested positive for Ebola as the current outbreaks starts spreading.
The children, who attend three different schools in Kampala, are among at least 15 people in the city confirmed to have been infected with Ebola, according to a statement by Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng.
The children are members of a family exposed to the disease by a man who traveled from one Ebola-hit district, sought treatment in Kampala and died there, the statement said.
‘He is responsible for infecting the family of seven, including the neighbors and many others,’ the statement said, speaking of the traveling Ebola patient. ‘We were able to get this cluster, plus one other, because of the ministry’s vigilance in contact tracing and field case management.’
Authorities are ‘following up’ 170 contacts from schools the six children attend, it said.
Fears that Ebola could spread far from the outbreak’s epicenter compelled authorities to impose an ongoing lockdown, including nighttime curfews, on two of the five districts reporting Ebola cases on October 16. The measures were put in place after a man infected with Ebola traveled to Kampala and died there, becoming the city’s first confirmed Ebola case.
Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of contagious diseases like Ebola.
Uganda’s minister for health, June Ruth Aceng, pictured, has ben warning people about the spread of Ebola across the country
The head of the Uganda Medical Association on Tuesday urged health authorities to impose a lockdown in Kampala, a stringent measure that the country’s president has previously said he doesn’t want to implement
The head of the Uganda Medical Association on Tuesday urged health authorities to impose a lockdown in Kampala, a stringent measure that the country’s president has previously said he doesn’t want to implement.
That official, Dr. Samuel Oledo, told reporters the situation was alarming because some ‘people are not even reporting cases’ of Ebola.
Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, has infected 109 people and killed 30 since September 20, when the outbreak was declared several days after the disease began spreading in a rural community in central Uganda.
Ugandan health officials in the district of Mubende, the epicenter, were not quick to confirm Ebola partly because the disease’s symptoms can mimic those of the more prevalent malaria.
Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and, at times, internal and external bleeding.
There is no proven vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola that’s circulating in this East African country of 45 million people.
Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s largest death toll.
Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.
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