Teenagers held over Islamic school fire

Scotland Yard said the two 17-year-olds and two 18-year-olds were detained late on Sunday and taken to a south London police station, where they remained in custody yesterday.

Almost 130 pupils and staff were moved from the Darul Uloom Islamic School on Saturday evening as teachers reacted quickly and extinguished the flames.

Only minor damage was caused to the school but two boys suffered from smoke inhalation although they were not taken to hospital.

The blaze happened just days after an Islamic centre in London’s Muswell Hill was burnt to the ground amid suggestions it was a racist attack.

The building was daubed with the letters ‘’EDL’’, apparently referencing the English Defence League.

That fire prompted fears that the fire may have been a reprisal attack in the wake of the Woolwich murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has said London’s communities were facing “difficult times” and said
police were using their “full range of policing tactics to protect sites that might be vulnerable”.

School principal Mustafa Musa said intruders started the fire in the school teaching area but did not say how it was started or if the culprits broke into the building.

London Fire Brigade said the fire was under control less than an hour they were called.

The £3,000-a-year boarding school was established in 1988 with the purpose of producing “great scholars and Huffaz (people who have memorised the Koran) to preserve and transmit the eternal message of Allah”.

Its website says: “The institution helps children to explore and develop their Islamic identity as a natural part of their mental, emotional and personal development.”

It school was built in 1974 and has 130 boarding rooms.