YANGON: A fire blamed on an electrical fault killed 13 teenage boys at a Muslim school in Myanmar’s main city on Tuesday, police and witnesses said, raising fears of a further eruption of tensions after a wave of religious unrest.

Police and soldiers flanked the scorched blue mosque and religious school in central Yangon, where dozens of children had been sleeping when the blaze broke out early on Tuesday.

Authorities launched an inquiry into the fire, stressing that early indications suggested a tragic accident. Police said two guards at the building had been charged with negligence.

The assurances came amid Muslim suspicions that they had been targeted following a spate of Buddhist-Muslim killings and arson that has spread across central Myanmar in recent days.

“The whole country is worried now for Yangon, and is wondering whether this was a crime,” Ye Naung Thein, of Muslim organisation Myanmar Mawlwy federation, said at the scene, urging people to wait for the result of the inquiry.

Hundreds of mourners, many praying and weeping, packed into a Muslim cemetery in a suburb north of Yangon to bury the victims, with many among the crowd voicing suspicions the fire was started deliberately.

A teacher, who was awoken as flames tore through the building and who helped evacuate survivors, said he had smelt petrol during the blaze—echoing the testimony of several witnesses.—AFP