86 NYS recruits injured in morning stampede

NYS officers in a parade. Photo/COURTESY At least 86 National Youth Service (NYS) recruits were injured, five of them critically, in a stampede Monday morning at the Gilgil Training School.
According to a source inside the school, the stampede was triggered by four recruits who ran towards a parade of about 10,000 recruits at 6AM, in what appeared like they were running from danger.

The four had skipped the morning parade before they saw instructors patrolling the area near where they were hiding and decided run and join the rest.

During the incident, 86 were injured and rushed to the Gilgil Sub County Hospital, five of them were later transferred to the Rift Valley Provincial Hospital for further treatment.
In November last year, one person died and 20 others were seriously injured in a botched terror drill at Strathmore University.
The students were reportedly caught off guard when men dressed in Arab scarfs showed up and started shooting what was later revealed to be rubber bullets.
Reports indicate that some students jumped from the fourth floor of their classrooms while others took to the nearby river in search of an escape route.
Following the tragic mock exercise, the National Police Service banned all schools and campuses from conducting terror drills on their own.

The incident took place months after another terror scare at the Kikuyu Campus of the University of Nairobi led to the death of one student in a stampede.
The stampede was triggered by the explosion of an electrical transformer that the students thought was a bomb explosion.