|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Saturday, 17 July 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Nearly 80 children dead in Indian school blaze NEW DELHI, Friday (AFP, Reuters) Nearly 80 children were burnt to death yesterday in a fire that tore through a primary school in India's southern Tamil Nadu state, officials said. "Seventy-seven bodies have been recovered," senior police official S. Natarajani said from the temple-studded pilgrimage town of Kumbakonam where the blaze broke out at around 11 am). Thirty-four other children were severely injured in the fire and were admitted to hospital in Kumbakonam, 350 kilometres from Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu, Natarajani said. Sobbing parents raced to the Saraswati Primary School attended by children aged six to 13 as bodies were removed and the injured were bundled into ambulances. Television footage showed heaps of bodies, some locked in embrace. "Parents are howling outside the building, unable to recognise their little ones, as the bodies are being loaded into ambulances," said a housewife living next door to the school. "It's heart-rending to see these little bodies so horribly charred and twisted being brought out on stretechers," Malathi, who like many Indians uses one name, said. The primary school was housed on the third-storey thatched-roof terrace of the Krishna Girls High School. Some senior students from the floors below tried to save the children but the smoke and flames made it impossible to reach them, Malathi said. Reports from the scene said some of the children had tried to flee down a narrow stairway. Some suffocated in the stampede. District administrator J. Radhakrishnan said the fire could have started in the school kitchen where cooks were preparing the noon-day meal or it might have been sparked by an electrical short circuit. An investigation was under way into the blaze. Other parents, wailing and beating their breasts, crowded the government hospital where bodies were lined up outside the morgue. Radhakrishnan said at least 30 children in hospital were suffering from severe burns. "The injured children are in great pain even though they are under sedation and all efforts are being taken to save their lives," a doctor, who did not wish to be identified, said. Radhakrishnan said the thatched roof of the junior portion of the school "ignited with great force," trapping the children. The Fire Department brought in heavy equipment to smash through walls of the building in an attempt to reach the children. Police officials said most of the victims were junior students who had been trapped by the blaze but some of the dead may have been teachers. "The bodies are so badly charred it's difficult to identify the children or their sexes," an official said. Officials in Madras said medical teams were rushing to the town as local facilities were not adequate to cope with a disaster of such magnitude. "A team of paramedics and doctors is already on its way," a state health department official said. "The fire was put out within two hours but the process of relief is still under way," Radhakrishnan said. Some parents broke down as the names of dead children were read out over a microphone at the hospital. Sobbing parents crammed the hospital where the dozens of injured children, some horribly burned, were taken. "There is so much noise and wailing that you can't hear anything," said a hospital attendant. The fire had been extinguished by early afternoon and rescuers were searching the building for more dead and injured. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
