International News

BANGKOK, (APP/AFP) – Seventeen young girls died after a
fire swept through the dormitory of a school for children of hill tribes in northern Thailand, officials said Monday, adding several others were injured in the blaze.
The fire started late at night, meaning many of the children at the
charity-run Christian school were asleep and unable to escape as flames
engulfed the two-storey building.
“The fire broke out at 11pm on Sunday (1600 GMT). Seventeen girls
were killed, with five injured,” Colonel Prayad Singsin of the police in Chiang Rai told AFP.
Two of the injured are in a serious condition, he said, but added
that initial fears that two more girls were missing had been discounted after rescuers picked through the charred debris.
“The fire is out, but the cause of the blaze is still under
investigation,” Prayad said, adding forensic officers were due to arrive.
A Chiang Rai provincial official confirmed the death toll, adding
that the privately-run school is home to girls aged between six and 13 years old.
Those in the dormitory on Sunday night were drawn mainly from the
deprived local hill tribes who live too far away to travel to the school.
“There were 38 students inside the dormitory when the fire broke out.
Some were not yet asleep so they escaped,” the province’s deputy governor, Arkom Sukapan, told AFP.
“But others were asleep and could not escape, resulting in the large
number of casualties.”
Photographs on the school’s Facebook page showed firefighters
struggling to douse the flames as they tore through the wooden building.
Thai media showed a fire truck spraying water onto the blaze as the
upper storey of the school was consumed by the fire.
Thailand’s is home to a patchwork of hill tribes who mainly live in
the remote northern area bordering Laos and Myanmar.
Many are descendants of refugees from Myanmar or China and exist
within subsistence farming communities with their own distinctive dialects and rituals.
They mostly live beyond the reach of state resources meaning hill
tribe children suffer at school, as well as in their health and development.
Poverty means adults are easy prey for drug gangs who pay them to
smuggle narcotics — including heroin and amphetamines — across the zone, known as the “Golden Triangle”.
Thai security forces frequently engage in deadly gun battles with
hill tribe drug mules in the region.
That link engenders prejudice among many Thais and hill tribes are
often portrayed negatively in the media.
Chiang Rai town and the surrounding hills are popular with foreign
tourists for hiking and adventure sports.
Visitors can go on tours to see the isolated tribes, although the
practice of posing for photographs at villages has come in for criticism for denigrating their unique culture and treating the ethnic groups as exhibits in “human zoos”.
Thailand has poor health and safety standards and accidents are
common across the kingdom.