19 killed, 38 injured after lightning strikes school classroom in Uganda

A lightning strike has killed at least 18 children aged between seven and 16 and their student teacher in Uganda, police said yesterday.

Fifteen girls and three boys died at Runyanya Primary School, after the strike on Tuesday.

Uganda has one of the highest rates of lightning strike deaths in the world and its capital Kampala has more days of lightning per year than any other city, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

The lightning hit the victims in a classroom at a school in Kiryandongo, 130 miles north of Kampala, police said.

Another 38 children were admitted to hospital.

The East African country has suffered a wave of fatal lightning strikes in recent weeks during unseasonably heavy rains. The number of deaths were debated in parliament this week, with some MPs calling on the government to come up with strategy to deal with what they termed "a crisis".

"I don't know which minister is in charge of the lightning but let the government come up with a statement to inform the country on what is going on and how we can manage it," speaker Rebecca Kadaga said.

Local meteorologists have criticised the government for not providing enough lightning conductors for buildings in storm hotspots.

"The children were killed in single lightning strike," a police spokesman said. "They were ready to leave school but there was a heavy downpour and so they sheltered in the classroom and then, all of a sudden, it struck."

The state-owned New Vision newspaper said on Tuesday that at least 40 people had been killed by lightning strikes in recent weeks.

A natural resource management specialist at Uganda's National Forestry Authority, Marx Kabi, said the felling of trees was another major cause of lightning strikes.

"People have cut down trees, which used to absorb or provide a channel for the transmission of lightning," he said.

Meanwhile, Nigerian authorities said 15 people in the country's north-east have died from lightning strikes after strong thunderstorms swept through the region's rural pasturelands.

A spokesman for Nigeria's emergency service said yesterday the deaths occurred in Gombe and Yobe states.