Market fire kills 15, injures 70 in Kenya’s capital, official says
NAIROBI, Kenya — A fire swept through one of Nairobi’s largest open-air markets early Thursday, killing 15 people and sending 70 to hospitals, an official said, as traders who lived there struggled to wake their families and flee.
Children were among the victims, President Uhuru Kenyatta said, and many of the injured were in critical condition.
Gikomba market has burned several times in recent years, and Kenyatta said that “we owe the victims, and the people of Nairobi, a clear, credible plan to end these fires.”
Nairobi County Commissioner Kangethe Thuku said six bodies had been recovered and nine were in a building and had yet to be retrieved.
Rescue teams searched for bodies and survivors in the market in the Pumwani low-income neighborhood in Kenya’s capital.
Many Kenyans shop for secondhand clothes from the market, which also supplies other vendors with used clothes from Europe and the United States.
The cause of the fire was not immediately announced but “for now we have declared this site a crime scene,” Thuku said.
Security forces guarded the smoking site as workers picked through the blackened rubble.
One market trader, Ruth Kaveke, grasped a wad of burnt currency and said it was the only thing she managed to salvage from her cloth-making store. It was the second time fire has destroyed her livelihood in as many years.
The fire started around 2:30 a.m. and was contained about 90 minutes later, according to the St. John Ambulance charity.
Officials have said access roads to the market are clogged with traders who block emergency response services, while critics say those services are poor.
The market is a fiveminute walk from Nairobi’s central business district in an area targeted by the Nairobi County Government for an upgrade.