Fire at girls school in Kenya kills at least 16 students, minister says
Parents and guardians stand at Utumishi Girls Academy following the deadly fire in Nakuru, north of the Kenyan capital Nairobi on May 28, 2026. (Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — At least 16 students died in an overnight fire at a boarding school for girls in central Kenya, a government minister said Thursday.
Education Minister Julius Ogamba said in a statement posted to X that a “regrettable fire tragedy befell Utumishi Girls Academy in Nakuru County. Most unfortunately, 16 learners lost their lives while several others suffered injuries in the incident.”
The Kenya Police Service said in a statement posted to Facebook that “several other students were injured and are receiving treatment.”
The blaze broke out in a dormitory at the Utumishi Girls Senior School in the town of Gilgil in Kenya’s Nakuru County, police said, around 74 miles from the capital Nairobi.
Search and rescue operations are ongoing, police said. “We are working to account for all students and support affected families during this difficult time,” the service said in its statement.
The fire was reported early Thursday at around 3:30 a.m. local time, according to the Kenya Red Cross, which said its team were supporting the ongoing multi-agency response. “Several students have been evacuated and are receiving treatment in various hospitals,” Kenya Red Cross said.
Ogamba expressed “our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and relatives of the learners who lost their lives in this sorrowful incident. We wish a quick recovery to those who were injured. We pray that God grants everyone strength and fortitude during this difficult and painful period.”
“Investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing and updates will be provided in due course,” the minister added.
ABC News’ Charlotte Gardiner contributed to this report.
Sergey Sobyanin, Mayor of Moscow, August 29, 2017 in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Sandra Montanez/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Dozens of Ukrainian long-range drones attacked Moscow overnight into Tuesday morning, according to the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, with damage confirmed at a major oil refinery and flight restrictions disrupting flights at all four of the city’s international airports.
“Over the past 24 hours, an attack by enemy drones on Moscow has continued. One of the drones damaged a facility on the territory of the Moscow Refinery. There were no casualties. Emergency services are working at the scene of the incident,” Sobyanin wrote in a post to Telegram. At least 60 Ukrainian drones were shot down, the mayor said.
Purported videos of the Gazprom-owned refinery in Moscow showed fire and a large plume of black smoke rising over the facility, which is located in the Kapotnya District to the southeast of the city.
Regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said in a post to Telegram that 86 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over the wider Moscow region, with six people injured.
Ukrainian forces have been expanding their drone attacks toward Moscow in recent months, as just one element of its growing long-range strike campaign into Russia — which officials in Kyiv refer to as “long-range sanctions.”
Tuesday marked the ninth consecutive day of Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow, according to statements issued by Sobyanin on Telegram. The number of drones that Sobyanin reported shot down on Tuesday was also the largest of any day since May 17.
Already this year, Sobyanin has reported the downing of more Ukrainian drones — 1,134 craft — than in all of 2025, when the mayor said Russian forces intercepted 734 Ukrainian drones en route to the capital.
The latest Ukrainian strikes came a day after a major Russian attack on Kyiv, which killed at least five people, damaged a historic cathedral and prompted Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin a “barbarian.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a purported video of the burning Moscow refinery on Telegram on Tuesday morning, attributing the damage to “Ukrainian long-range strikes.”
“Russia must be compelled to end the war against our people. And Ukrainian long-range weapons are one of the important components of such coercion,” Zelenskyy wrote.
“This is a just response to Russian attacks and a response to the prolongation of the war, which needs to be ended,” Zelenskyy added.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that the Moscow refinery is one of the country’s largest, with a refining capacity of around 11 million tons of oil per year. The plant, he said, accounts for some 40% of Moscow’s gasoline needs.
“Even though Putin has deployed almost all of the key air defense and missile defense systems to Moscow, this doesn’t save the Russians. Putin is not a guarantee of safety for Muscovites,” Kovalenko wrote.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack on Moscow was one element of a larger wave of overnight strikes. The ministry claimed that Russian forces downed at least 172 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced flight restrictions at more than a dozen airports across southern and western Russia, including at all four of Moscow’s international airports — Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo.
Elsewhere, flight restrictions affected airports stretching from Sochi on the Black Sea coast to Nizhnekamsk in the Tatarstan Republic, some 750 miles from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia continued its own long-range attacks overnight. The air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 132 drones and two missiles into the country in its latest barrage, of which 114 drones were intercepted or suppressed
Both missiles and 16 drones impacted across nine locations, the air force said.
The latest exchanges came as Zelenskyy sat down with Western leaders — among them President Donald Trump — at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday.
On Monday, the Ukrainian leader said he would use his visit to the G7 gathering to again appeal for Kyiv’s Western partners to put more pressure on Putin to end the Russian invasion.
Smoke is seen as two major fires burn after a drone and missile attack by Russian forces on July 2, 2026 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
(LVIV, LONDON and NEW YORK) — At least 20 people were killed and dozens of others were injured after Kyiv came under attack from a “massive” barrage of Russian ballistic missiles and drones overnight, Ukrainian officials said, describing multiple explosions across the capital.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv City Military Administration, published an updated death toll on his Telegram channel. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said the attack’s main target was Kyiv. More than 90 people had been injured across the country.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko described the attack as “massive.” President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said first responders in the capital were “clearing the rubble, searching for people, and providing assistance.”
“Damage has been reported at more than 20 sites across the city, most of them ordinary residential buildings,” Zelenskyy said. “There was also damage to an ambulance station, a research institute, a hotel, and businesses.”
Moscow targeted Ukraine with more than 70 missiles, nearly half of which were ballistic, along with almost 500 drones in the overnight attack, Zelenskyy said.
Damage has been reported in every district in Kyiv. The worst hit was the Darnytskyi district, where part of a nine-floor apartment building collapsed, leaving people trapped inside, Klitschko. Search and rescue teams are still looking for those thought to be under the rubble, including a 15-year-old girl and her family.
Another air raid alert has been issued in Kyiv right now due to Russian drones.
In Holosiivskyi district, the roof of a multi-story residential building was on fire, Klitschko said. In the Shevchenkivskyi district, in the center of the capital, there was a fire on the roof of a hotel.
During the strikes, the mayor urged residents to stay in shelters. Klitschko said earlier that of the 34 people initially recorded as injured in the strikes, 32 were taken to the hospital; two others were treated on the spot.
The strikes targeting Kyiv came hours after the Ukrainian military struck a large Russian oil refinery in Ufa, and a military complex in the Penza region, Zelenskyy said. The night before, Ukraine also struck a satellite communications center in the Moscow region, Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine’s strikes on Russia came amid a mounting pressure campaign by Kyiv seeking to push Russia to end the war, which in February entered its fifth year.
An analysis from a U.S. think tank published on Wednesday said troop casualties in the war — missing, killed and wounded — had surpassed 2 million, including as many as 600,000 deaths.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies said in that report that the figures heavily skewed toward Russian losses, with roughly three Russians killed or wounded to every one Ukrainian killed or wounded.
Russian casualties amounted to 1.4 million people, according to the data, including 450,000 who had been killed in the war, the report said. Ukrainian forces have suffered 525,000 to 625,000 casualties, including 125,000 to 150,000 deaths, the study said.
Neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian military releases data detailing their own battlefield casualties.
The report’s authors, drawing on information collected from Western governments, including the U.S., and on open source information, said Russia also lost territory in April and May. Overall, the report’s authors said, 2026 has been counterproductive for the Russian military, and that Moscow may be losing the war.
Offering historical perspective, the report says Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. fatalities in all wars combined since World War II, and more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II.
Russia’s advances in key Ukrainian areas “are among the slowest rates of advance in any war over the last century,” the report stated.
In Kyiv on Thursday, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chair of Ukraine’s parliament, accused Moscow of using missiles and drones to deliberately target civilians, which turned “an ordinary night in the capital of a European state into a struggle for survival.”
“This crime, like every one before it, must be met not only with condemnation, but with a resolute response: stronger air defence for Ukraine, tougher sanctions against Russia, and inevitable accountability for everyone responsible,” he said on social media.
ABC News’ Patrick Reevell and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A police officer was shot and killed while executing a search warrant Thursday as part of an investigation into a series of shootings in Toronto, including one at the United States consulate in March, authorities said.
The officer, 43-year-old Marc Pinizzotto with the department’s emergency task force, was “shot in the line of duty while conducting a search warrant early this morning,” Toronto Police Service Chief Myron Demkiw said during a press briefing on Thursday.
Pinizzotto was provided emergency care and transported to a local hospital, where he died, the chief said.
Police did not share additional details on the circumstances of the shooting. A suspect is in custody and receiving emergency medical treatment in the hospital, according to Demkiw, who did not share further details on the individual.
The investigation involving the search warrant and several others executed on Thursday “concerned a number of shootings,” including one at the U.S. consulate in Toronto on March 10, Demkiw said.
Witnesses observed two people emerge from a white Honda CR-V and discharge a handgun at the consulate before driving away, according to police. No one was injured during the incident. Officers got a call about the shooting around 5:29 a.m., and found shell casings and damage to the building when they arrived, police said.
A 19-year-old suspect wanted in connection with the investigation remains at large, Demkiw said Thursday.
The police chief identified the suspect as Zara Jabbi and warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
“I urge you to turn yourself in,” Demkiw said while addressing the suspect during the briefing.
