A fire
killed 24 people, mostly teenagers, trapped behind barred windows and a
blocked exit in an Islamic school dormitory on the outskirts of
Malaysia’s capital early Thursday, officials said.
Firefighters rushed to the scene after receiving a distress call at
5.41 a.m. and took an hour to put out the blaze, which started on the
top floor of the three-story building, Kuala Lumpur police chief Amar
Singh said. He said there were at least 24 charred bodies, 22 of them
boys between 13 and 17, and two teachers.
Singh said 14 other students and four teachers were rescued, with six of them hospitalized in critical condition.
"We believe (they died of) suffocation...the bodies were totally burnt," he said.
The fire broke out near the door of the boys’ dormitory, trapping the
victims as it was the only entrance and the windows are grilled, fire
department senior official Abu Obaidat Mohamad Saithalimat said.
He said the cause was believed to be an electrical short-circuit.
Another
fire department official Soiman Jahid said firefighters heard shouts for
help when they arrived at the school. He said they found 13 bodies
huddled in a pile on the right corner of the dorm, another eight on the
left corner of the dorm and one in the middle near the staircase.
Soiman
said initial investigations showed the school had just submitted an
application to the city council for building safety approval but
couldn’t give further details.
A fire department official who declined to be named because he wasn’t
authorized to give a statement said the bodies were piled on top of
each other, indicating a possible stampede as people tried to flee the
fire. The official had earlier said 25 bodies were found, but the more
recent tally of dead and injured matches the number of people thought to
have resided there.
Singh said police were still finalizing the details and investigating the cause.
Local
media showed pictures of blackened bunk beds frames in the burned
dormitory. A resident, Nurhayati Abdul Halim, told local media that she
saw the boys crying and screaming for help when the fire broke.
"I saw their little hands out of the grilled windows; crying for
help....I heard their screams and cries but I could not do anything. The
fire was too strong for me to do anything," she said, adding that the
school had been operating in the area for the past year.
The Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah is a private Islamic center, known as a
"tahfiz" school, for Muslim children, mainly boys, to study and memorize
the Quran. Many such schools are exempt from state inspections.
The Star
newspaper said there were 519 tahfiz schools registered nationwide as of
April, but many more are believed to be unregistered.
The newspaper said the fire department had recorded 211 fires in such
private Islamic centers since 2015. In August, 16 people fled a fire at
a tahfiz school in northern Kedah state. Another tahfiz school was
destroyed by a fire in May but no one was hurt.
The worst fire disaster occurred in 1989 when 27 female students at a
private Islamic school in Kedah state died when fire gutted the school
and eight wooden hostels.