At least 26 children, aged 5 and 6, died Monday in a school fire made of straw and wooden classrooms in Maradi, southern Niger, seven months after a similar tragedy killed twenty people in Niamey.
The fire was reported to the AFP by the governor of the Maradi region near the Nigerian border, who mourned the death of 18 illegal miners in a mine collapse on Sunday. “Currently we have 26 deaths, 13 injured, four of whom have been seriously injured,” Governor Saibo Abubakar said, noting that they were “5 to 6 year olds” first-year students of the preparatory course.
There was a fire in the straw and wood classrooms
“We do not know the origin of the fire and an investigation has been opened to find it,” he added, adding that “three days of mourning will be observed in the Maradi area” until Tuesday. The ‘Fire Straw and wooden classrooms were called straw huts.
In mid-April, twenty children, ages 3, 4 and 5, were burned to death in a similar building in an old building in the “Netherlands” working class district “Netherlands” on the border of the international airport.
Fires of these classes occur relatively frequently in hazardous and highly combustible materials
In Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, to alleviate the shortage of classes, authorities have built thousands of straw and tree barns where children study and sometimes sit on the ground.
Fires of these classes occur relatively frequently in hazardous and highly flammable materials, but rarely occur in victims. Nigerian President Mohamed Bassum recently promised to replace them with concrete classes.
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