April 4: Six persons have been killed and three schoolchildren injured by lightning since last night.

Seventeen students of the West Midnapore school where three boys suffered burns were traumatised by the lightning strike half an hour before their classes were to begin. They are in hospital with tinnitus (hearing a ringing sound in the ear) or blurred vision.

“We saw a flash over the building and heard a crash of thunder. In Class VI, the students were screaming. The wall had cracked and turned black,” said Alok De, the head of the Jhargram institution.

The deaths — one while a teen was standing on a verandah — occurred in West Midnapore, Hooghly and Nadia.