At least 16 people, mostly students, died and 73 were injured in a nighttime fire in a dormitory at a girls' boarding school in Kenya, a police source told AFP on Thursday, without giving further details immediately.

No official figures have been released so far. No details could be obtained regarding the ages of the residents housed in this dormitory.

The fire was reported Thursday at 03:30 (00:30 GMT) at the Utumishi girls' school in Gilgil, a town located about 100 kilometers north of Nairobi, the Red Cross told AFP, adding that it had deployed teams to the scene but refused to give a casualty count.

Gilgil is home to a large garrison of the Kenyan army.

According to a correspondent on the scene, many frantic parents flocked to the school and are gathered in the courtyard awaiting news of their children.

Kenyan Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen and Deputy Police Chief Eliud Lagat are among those on site, according to Kenyan police on X.

The head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Mohammed Amin, is supervising the preliminary investigation into the cause of the fire in Gilgil, she added.

Many students are boarding in Kenya, and the East African country has already experienced several deadly fires in its schools.

In September 2024, 21 students died when a fire ravaged their dormitory in the middle of the night near the town of Nyeri, about 160 kilometers north of Nairobi.

The deadliest fire in a Kenyan school killed 67 high school students in 2001, in the Machakos district of southern Kenya.