MADRAS, 17 July 2004 — Eighty schoolchildren were burned to death and 29 received severe burns in a devastating fire that broke out yesterday in a school complex in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Almost all the children were in the age group of 7-10.

The fire broke out around 11 a.m. in the Saraswathi Nursery School, located on the first floor of a building housing another school, Sri Krishna Middle School, in Kumbakonam town in Thanjavur district, about 300 km from here.

“Twenty-eight of the dead children were boys and 38 girls. Fourteen other bodies have been too charred to identify their sex. We have so far been able to identify the bodies of 48 children with the help of the parents,’’ Thanjavur district administrator J. Radhakrishan told Arab News.

State Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha, who visited the accident site and the hospital where the injured children have been admitted, said: “This is entirely due to the criminal negligence on the part of the school management and the district school authorities.”

A senior police officer said the school principal, Pulavar Palanichamy, had been arrested and would be formally charged with negligence.

Radhakrishnan said: “The fire probably started in the kitchen of the school on the ground floor and the flames shot up, setting fire to the thatched roof of the first floor where the primary school was functioning.

‘’There were more than 850 children in the school at the time of the fire, and about 190 were on the third floor, which houses the classrooms for grades three, four and five. Many of them were trapped when the burning roof collapsed on them.’’

People in the neighborhood had started dousing the flames and rescuing the children before firefighters arrived, a senior fire department officer said. “As soon as the fire started, the teachers escaped, leaving the children behind,” he said. “It was the local people who saved at least 80 children from the third floor before the roof came down.”

He said rescue operations were apparently hampered by the narrow and steep stairs of the school, and by the few exits. The crowd of uncontrolled, volunteer rescuers ended up blocking the main door as they tried to help.

The teachers had already left after opening the locked front door, said M.B. Venkatesh, who lives near the school. He said many children were killed in the stampede. Most Indian primary schools lock the main gate or door to keep young children from getting out into the street.

The local hospital does not have adequate facilities to treat so many burn victims, and officials were discussing transporting some survivors by road to Madras, more than two hours’ drive.

Hours later, hundreds of small wooden stools lay toppled on the blackened floor, strewn with rubber slippers, shoes, schoolbags, notebooks, lunch boxes and clothes. Six blackboards, plastered into the wall at regular distances, still bore traces of the lessons the children were learning.

“Fill in the blanks,” was written in chalk on one blackboard, asking the children to complete the spellings of words in the local Tamil language.

This is the second major fire in Tamil Nadu in the last six months. On Jan 23, 60 people attending a wedding were killed in Srirangam town, about 315 km from here, when the thatched roof of the marriage hall caught fire.