Police said the blaze in Nyeri county’s Hillside Endarasha Academy broke out at around midnight, engulfing rooms where the children were sleeping – the primary school caters to some 800 pupils, aged between roughly five and 12.
National police spokesperson Resila Onyango told newsmen there are 17 fatalities from this incident and there are also others who were taken to hospital with serious injuries while the bodies recovered at the scene were burnt beyond recognition.
Police said the average age of the victims was around nine years old.
Onyango said several others were injured, 16 of them seriously, and had been rushed to a nearby hospital.
She said the cause of the fire remains unknown, but an investigation had been launched.
President William Ruto who expressed his condolences for those killed said he had instructed officials to thoroughly investigate the horrific incident, and promised that those responsible will be held to account.
The school is located around 100 miles north of the capital Nairobi, in Nyeri county.
In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the Kibera neighbourhood of Nairobi.
In 2001, 67 pupils were killed by an arson attack on their dormitory at the Kyanguli Mixed Secondary School David Mutiso in Kenya’s southern Machakos district.
Two pupils were charged with the murder, and the headmaster and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.
In 1994, 40 school children were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that ravaged the Shauritanga Secondary School for Girls in the northern region of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.