A human tragedy narrowly avoided. An arson attack partially destroyed Thursday morning, June 1, without causing any casualties, a dormitory for young girls in Karasabai, Guyana, near the Brazilian border, according to the police. This disaster occurs less than fifteen days after the fire of a girls' boarding school which killed 19 people in Mahdia and traumatized the country.
The 19 residents, aged 11 to 16, were able to escape the fire started by four young men who wanted revenge for having been chased away, said the police, who were alerted by the concierge at 2:30 a.m. local time. (8:30 a.m. in Paris). “The four suspects were questioned by the police […] in the presence of their parents and they all confessed to planning and executing the crime,” Guyana police said.
On the night of May 21 to 22, a resident, unhappy with the confiscation of her cell phone, set fire to her girls' dormitory in Mahdia, a landlocked mining town in the center of the country. Eighteen young girls and a toddler boy had perished, unable to escape from the building, whose windows were fitted with bars. The president had declared three days of national mourning and Independence Day on May 26 had been transformed into a day of tribute and prayers.
