GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (AP) — In­ves­ti­ga­tors in Guyana be­lieve a fire that killed 19 most­ly girls trapped in a school dor­mi­to­ry was de­lib­er­ate­ly set by a stu­dent who was up­set that her mo­bile phone was con­fis­cat­ed, a top of­fi­cial said Tues­day.

The sus­pect in the fire late Sun­day, who is among sev­er­al in­jured peo­ple, had been dis­ci­plined by the dorm ad­min­is­tra­tor for hav­ing an af­fair with an old­er man, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er Ger­ald Gou­veia said. The stu­dent al­leged­ly threat­ened to torch the dorm and lat­er set a fire in a bath­room area, Gou­veia said.

The fire raced through the wood, con­crete and iron-grilled build­ing af­ter it had been locked for the night by the dorm ad­min­is­tra­tor — or house moth­er — to pre­vent the girls from sneak­ing out, Gou­veia said.

The girl, who is about 14, was burned in the fire and is in a hos­pi­tal in the area. She ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from the hos­pi­tal this week and held in ju­ve­nile de­ten­tion un­til she is an adult, said Leslie Ram­sam­my, an ad­vis­er to the health min­istry.

“She did this out of love for them. She felt she was forced to do so be­cause many of them leave the build­ing at night to so­cial­ize,” Gou­veia told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. “This is a very sad sit­u­a­tion, but the state is go­ing to work with the stu­dents and the fam­i­lies to pro­vide all the sup­port they need.”

All but one of the vic­tims were In­dige­nous girls aged 12 to 18 from re­mote vil­lages served by the board­ing school in Mah­dia, a min­ing com­mu­ni­ty near the Brazil bor­der. The re­main­ing vic­tim was the five-year-old son of the house moth­er.

Many of the vic­tims were trapped as the build­ing burned, though fire­fight­ers were able to res­cue peo­ple by break­ing holes through one of the walls.

“The house moth­er was asleep at the time in­side the build­ing but pan­icked and could not find the right keys to un­lock the build­ing from in­side but she made it out. She al­so lost her five-year-old child in the fire,” Gou­veia said.

Many of the nine peo­ple hos­pi­tal­ized are in se­ri­ous con­di­tion.

Po­lice were ex­pect­ed to charge the man who had the re­la­tion­ship with the stu­dent with statu­to­ry rape be­cause she was un­der 16, Gou­veia said.

Guyana’s gov­ern­ment has ac­cept­ed of­fers from the US to send foren­sic and oth­er ex­pert teams to help with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Gou­veia said. The gov­ern­ment al­so was send­ing spe­cial­ists in DNA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to help iden­ti­fy re­mains of 13 of the 19 vic­tims who died at the scene.

“Lead­ers from all over the world have been of­fer­ing to help us at this time. They were call­ing and mes­sag­ing Pres­i­dent Ali (Ir­faan) while he was on the ground in Mad­hia on Mon­day,“ Gou­veia said.

Mad­hia is a gold and di­a­mond min­ing town about 200 miles from the cap­i­tal, George­town.

Deputy Fire Chief Dwayne Scot­land told the AP that more lives could have been saved if the ser­vice had been in­formed of the blaze soon­er. When fire­fight­ers ar­rived, lo­cal res­i­dents were un­suc­cess­ful­ly strug­gling to douse the blaze and evac­u­ate peo­ple, he said.

“The build­ing was well en­gulfed,” he said.

This week’s dor­mi­to­ry fire out­ranked what had been the coun­try’s dead­liest fire in re­cent times, when 17 in­mates were killed at the main George­town prison in 2016. An­gry over tri­al de­lays and over­crowd­ing, some in­mates set fire to the build­ing, built to house 500 but con­tain­ing 1,100, re­sult­ing in the deaths of the 17 and se­vere in­juries to about a dozen oth­ers.