(Top) Nakum Jumsi, 6, who was injured in the fire (in the bed), and her mother at a nursing home in Itanagar; Burnt plates in the hostel. Telegraph pictures

Itanagar, Feb. 11: At least 10 primary school students were killed when a fire swept through their hostel in a remote Arunachal township last night, the blaze feeding on the bamboo walls as they slept.

Among the dead, all students of Don Bosco School, was a Class V boy who shook the others out of sleep helping many to escape, but couldn’t save himself from the leaping flames.

Six students were injured and three were still missing, said legislator Lokam Tassar, who spoke to several boarders of the gutted Holy Angel private hostel in Palin, in Kurung Kumey district, about 250km from state capital Itanagar.

“There were 62 students in the hostel. Most of them escaped by jumping out of windows,” the MLA said. “Unfortunately, the younger children were deep in sleep and could not wake up in time.”

All the victims — seven boys and three girls — were nursery or Class II students except Takam, who died saving the others from the fire that broke out around 9 last evening.

“All the kids who managed to escape told me about the courage of Takam,” Tassar said after a visit to the site of the tragedy, which brought back memories of another inferno nearly six years ago when 90 children died in a fire in a Tamil Nadu school.

If the thatched roof of a noon-meal centre in Kumbakonam, helped spread that July 16, 2004, blaze, one of India’s worst school tragedies, last night’s fire may have also started in a kitchen.

“There was a power cut in the area around 8 last evening. It is possible that the fire may have spread from candles or even from the kitchen. We are investigating the matter,” Palin additional deputy commissioner Chukhu Takar said tonight.

Tassar said the hostel was just a large dormitory with the only door close to the kitchen. “So the only exit was blocked. The students who died had no chance to escape.”

Kurung Kumey deputy commissioner R. Kamki said from Itanagar he had received a wireless message about the fire at 4 this morning. “It has been very difficult through the day because telephone connectivity has broken down,” he said but confirmed that 10 students had died.

Helicopters were pressed into service to evacuate the six injured and four of them have been admitted to hospitals.

As six-year-old Nakum Jumsi, one of the kids rescued by local people, writhed in a hospital bed in Itanagar, her mother B. Jumsi recalled the tense moments. “I woke up at 10.30 last night when my husband came running with the shocking news. We rushed to the hostel, which is about 5km from our home,” she said. “We reached the spot to find a completely gutted house.”

Father Sony PJ, vice-principal of Don Bosco College and a member of the society and managing committee of the Palin school, said the institute had been opened in 1995 with classes from KG to VI.

The school, which comes under the Itanagar diocese and the Dimapur Salesian province area, is part of the Don Bosco Mission started in the Northeast in 1922. The first college set up by the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) was St Anthony’s College in Shillong in 1934. The group also runs five more colleges in the region and has so far set up more than 200 schools across the Northeast.

Father James Poonthuruthil, the provincial of Salesians of Don Bosco, Dimapur province, said he was “devastated” by the deaths. “Although these kids have died outside the school campus in a private-run hostel, they are our schoolchildren and we share the sorrow of the parents and relatives.”

Asked if the Palin school was a sister institute of Don Bosco, Calcutta, Father Sony PJ said: “All Don Bosco institutions are linked, so is the one in Calcutta to us.”