2023-05-24 04:58:00
Most of the victims of this tragedy are children from a school, where the fire broke out because of a teenager unhappy with the confiscation of her laptop.
By VD with AFP
© KENO GEORGE / AFP
Published on
L’The fire that claimed the lives of 19 young people in a school dormitory in Guyana on Sunday was started by a teenager unhappy with the confiscation of her laptop, authorities have announced. “A student is suspected of having started the devastating fire because her mobile phone was confiscated from her,” police said in a statement on Tuesday.
The fire took place Sunday evening in Mahdia, a landlocked mining town in Guyana, a small English-speaking country in South America. Dormitory officials “confiscated her cell phone and the girl threatened that same evening to set fire to the building, and everyone heard her,” a government source told AFP on Tuesday. anonymity, claiming that the girl had admitted the facts.
The dormitory manager “freaked out”
“They (the students) are not allowed to have a mobile phone. They (the officials) found this girl with a phone. She was apparently sending photos,” the source said. The minor, currently hospitalized under police surveillance, went to the bathroom, sprayed insecticide on a curtain and set it on fire with a match, continued this source, assuring that several young girls gave the same version of the facts. “According to the students, they were sleeping and were awakened by screaming. They saw fire, smoke in the bathroom, which quickly spread in the building “built partly in wood, according to the police statement.
The drama was also aggravated by the fact that the head of the dormitory “panicked” and failed to find the key that opened the exit door of the building, whose windows were fitted with bars. The door was locked every night at 9 p.m., the source added. The young son of this official is among the 19 dead. Men broke down the door to allow the survivors, including the person responsible for the fire, to escape. The firefighters and the police arrived 25 minutes after the start of the disaster, the same source said.
« Tests ADN »
Thirteen young girls and the boy died on the spot, while five other young girls died at the Mahdia district hospital. A hospital source in Georgetown told AFP that “seven patients were still hospitalized, two still in critical condition”. Six autopsies were performed at the “hospital morgue and the causes of death were smoke inhalation and burns,” according to the police statement.
The other 13 bodies, unrecognizable, “were transported to Georgetown” for “DNA testing” for identification, it added. National Security Adviser Retired Army Captain Gerry Gouveia announced that a team of forensic experts from Barbados had arrived in Guyana to help with identification. She is expected to be joined in the coming days by other forensic experts from the United States. President Irfaan Ali also announced that Cuba had offered to “provide full medical support inside and outside Guyana and to be a host country for all medical needs.”
A small poor English-speaking country of 800,000 inhabitants, Guyana, a former Dutch and then British colony, has the world’s largest per capita oil reserves and hopes for rapid development in the years to come with the exploitation of these reserves which is still in progress. at its beginnings. Specialists estimate that the Guyana-Suriname basin contains around 15 billion barrels of oil reserves associated with significant gas deposits.
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