Malaysia school fire victims identified

Relatives furious over reports that metal bars on the windows trapped the boys

Malaysia has identified all 23 people who died in a horrific fire at an Islamic boarding school, an official said yesterday, as calls mounted for tougher regulation after the worst such tragedy in two decades.

The fire killed 21 teenage boys and two teachers after it broke out early on Thursday at a “tahfiz” school, where students learnt to memorise the Quran.

“We hope and pray this will be the last such incident and preventive actions must be in place and be the order of the day,” said Noor Hesham Abdullah, Malaysia’s director general of health, adding that DNA tests were used to identify the bodies.

There have been 31 similar fire incidents in the past, Malaysian officials said, but media put the figure higher. Among 1,034 fires in religious schools during the two years to August 2017, 211 schools burnt to the ground, the Star daily said, quoting figures.

Family members of Mohammad Haikal Abdullah, a 12-year-old who died in the blaze, were furious over reports that the only door to the school’s dormitory had caught fire while metal bars on the windows trapped the boys, leaving them unable to escape. fire department

Negligence investigation

“From what we understand, there was only one way out, but they couldn’t get through because it was on fire,” said his brother, Faizal Abdullah, as he waited outside a hospital morgue for his sibling’s remains to be identified.

“How could they have escaped? How could something like this have happened? We want to know.” Fire officials said they found no damage to the electrical wiring of the dormitory, ruling out their earlier suggestion that a short circuit probably caused the blaze.

The incident is being investigated as negligence, the fire chief, Wan Mohammad Noor Ebrahim, told state news agency Bernama.