Kenya school fire deaths now 68

The number of students killed by a fire at a boys' secondary school in Kenya has risen to sixty-eight.

The new figure -- a rise of ten on the previous official count -- was given by the provincial education chief, Samson Kisuke.

The fire destroyed a dormitory where about one-hundred-and-thirty teenage boys had been sleeping, and the authorities say they believe it was started deliberately. Survivors have spoken of suspicious incidents in the minutes before the blaze erupted, and that there was the smell of petrol. Teachers at the school near Machakos, about sixty-five kilometres east of Nairobi, have suggested it might have been started by someone angry over the cancellation of exam results because of a cheating scandal.

But the Kenyan director of education Sammy Kyungu said ninety-nine other schools were affected by the cancellations and it was too soon to connect the two.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service