Dozens of children were killed after a fire broke out at their religious school in Liberia on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The blaze started about midnight and gutted a dormitory and school building where students slept in Paynesville, on the outskirts of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, police spokesman Moses Carter said.<\/p>\n
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At least 26 young pupils and two teachers were killed, the president’s office said.\u00a0Carter said 27 students – between the ages of 10-20 – perished in the fire.<\/p>\n
“The kids were learning the Quran when the fire broke out,” he said.<\/p>\n
The cause of the fire was under investigation.<\/p>\n
Rescuers in white masks and surgical gloves carried the children’s bodies in bags from the burned-out building as crowds of people and relatives crushed together outside.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Parents at the scene wailed and wept as police fought a surging crowd to make way for ambulances taking away the bodies.<\/p>\n
Pastor Emmanuel Herbert from a nearby church told The Associated Press he and his congregation woke up to sounds of the fire and called for help.<\/p>\n
“When I turned around to look the entire place was red. When I looked through the window, I saw the whole place blazing with fire,” he said.<\/p>\n
The fire was so strong there was no way to enter the buildings, the pastor said.<\/p>\n
President George Weah visited the site in Paynesville.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“We are here to encourage parents of the victims to have strength because it is painful to lose your kids in this manner,” Weah told reporters at the scene.<\/p>\n
“We extend our sympathy to the bereaved families. We don’t know the cause of the fire yet, but we will encourage our investigators to find how it happened.”<\/p>\n
The Liberian authorities are all too familiar with deadly fires, often caused by malfunctioning generators, though “not on this scale”, said presidential spokesman Isaac Solo Kelgbeh.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The majority of Liberians are Christian but there is a sizeable minority of Muslims among the 4.5 million population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dozens of children were killed after a fire broke out at their religious school in Liberia on Wednesday. The blaze started about midnight and gutted a dormitory and school building where students slept in Paynesville, on the outskirts of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, police spokesman Moses Carter said. At least 26 young pupils and two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,12],"tags":[11583,287,8927,6537,9171,6738,6159,10197,7236,9515,1988,11743,11309,237,421,9374,3805,1989,11377,6736,8840,6047,6741,9539,6571,3954,5140],"class_list":["post-9217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary","category-world-news","tag-capital","tag-children","tag-christian","tag-church","tag-crowd","tag-families","tag-fire","tag-investigation","tag-kids","tag-killed","tag-liberia","tag-majority","tag-muslims","tag-pastor","tag-police","tag-population","tag-president","tag-president-george-weah","tag-presidential","tag-school","tag-strong","tag-students","tag-teachers","tag-victims","tag-white","tag-will","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}