Muslims carry the coffins of fire victims to the Yaeway cemetery in Yangon, yesterday. The fire caused by faulty electrical equipment killed 13 boys at an Islamic school in Yangon.
YANGON: A fire blamed on an electrical fault killed 13 teenage boys at a Muslim school in Myanmar’s main city yesterday, police and witnesses said, raising fears of a further eruption of tensions after a wave of religious unrest.
Police and soldiers flanked the scorched blue mosque and religious school in downtown Yangon, where dozens of children had been sleeping when the blaze broke out in the morning.
Authorities launched an inquiry into the blaze but said early indications suggested an accident — an effort to quash Muslim suspicions that they had been targeted following Buddhist-Muslim killings and arson in central Myanmar. “The whole country is worried now for Yangon, and is wondering whether this was a crime,” Ye Naung Thein, of Muslim organisation Myanmar Mawlwy federation, said, urging people to wait for the result of the inquiry.
Hundreds of mourners packed into a cemetery in a suburb north of Yangon to bury the victims, with many among the crowd voicing suspicions the fire was started deliberately. A teacher, who was awoken as flames tore through the building and who helped evacuate survivors, said he had smelt petrol during the blaze — echoing the testimony of several witnesses. AFP
