“It is still very chaotic here,” the school’s manager Rewat Wassana told CNN. “We are in the process of identifying bodies, none of the parents can claim their children’s bodies yet,” he said.
Meanwhile, Police Colonel Prayad Singsin, Commander of Wiang Pa Pao district in Chiang Rai, said that seventeen girls were killed and two are still missing, with five injured.
“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, said. “But others were asleep and could not escape, resulting in the large number of casualties.”
The cause of the fire was still under investigation, Singsin added.
Local media showed images of the two-storey building consumed by flames, with firefighters tackling the fire.
Twenty girls were rescued after firefighters on ladders scaled the walls of the building, said Sawang Momdee, chief of Chiang Rai’s fire unit, who led the operation. Of the 20 rescued.
“We were trying to save everyone through the window, but the fire spread very quickly,” he said. “We have done our best.”
Thailand’s hill tribes mainly live in the remote northern area bordering Laos and Myanmar and are often beyond the reach of state resources, suffering at school as well as in their health and development.
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