YANSHANPU: Thir­teen schoolchildren died in a dormitory fire in central China’s Henan province, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

The blaze at the Yingcai School in Henan’s Yanshanpu village was reported to the local fire department at 11pm on Friday night, Xinhua said. Thirteen students were confirmed dead and one injured.

A teacher at the school told state-run Hebei Daily that all the victims were from the same third-grade class of nine and 10-year-olds. On Saturday evening journalists saw the area around the school cordoned off, with more than a dozen police officers patrolling the scene.

The owner of a supermarket said she was asleep when the blaze took hold, but had heard about the tragedy. “The kids at the school are definitely mostly living around this area,” she said of the nearby boarding school.

“Our kids don’t go there so we’re not sure about the details,” she added. Other shopkeepers in the area said they too had gone to bed by the time the deadly fire hit the dormitory. Yanshanpu village was quiet and foggy on Saturday night, Journalists saw, with just a handful of shops, some unlit buildings and hardly anybody walking on the streets. There was a heavy security presence, with police cars lining a long stretch of the main street and a handful of onlookers standing behind the cordon tape.

One woman said that some of the pupils’ parents had left their children in the boarding school while they worked outside the area. Xinhua reported the flames had been extinguished by 11:40pm on Friday night.

The injured survivor “is currently receiving treatment at the hospital and is in stable condition”, according to the country’s official news agency.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2024