KENO GEORGE/ AFP
A 15-year-old girl who is accused of having started a fire at a school dormitory in Guyana last week was charged with 19 murders on Monday.
The fire killed 18 mostly Indigenous girls and one five-year-old boy in the building in the central city of Mahdia.
The girl started the fire after her phone was confiscated, police said.
She is being held in Guyana's juvenile detention centre and the charges against her were formalised during a virtual hearing in Magistrate's Court.
In the early hours of May 22, students awoke to screams and saw fire and smoke in the dormitory's bathroom area, police said in a statement.
Nearly 30 children were hospitalised while two girls in critical condition were flown to New York on Saturday to seek further medical attention.
Authorities have identified 13 victims via DNA testing, whose remains were returned to their families for burial.
The dormitory's fire alarm system and school fire drills are being investigated, Guyana's Education Minister Priya Manickchand said.

More from International news
-
Rain hampers search for Indian soldiers missing in flood
Heavy rain hampered the search for 23 Indian troops reported missing on Wednesday after a flash flood in northeastern Sikkim state, with the capital city of Gangtok cut off by road, defence officials said.
-
At least 21 dead after Italian tourist bus falls from Venice overpass
At least 21 people died on Tuesday and 18 were injured after a bus carrying tourists to a campground crashed off an overpass near Venice in northern Italy and caught fire, city officials said.
-
Flights cancelled, work suspended as typhoon Koinu grinds towards Taiwan
Typhoon Koinu grinded towards southern Taiwan on Wednesday bringing heavy rain and winds and causing the cancellation of 70 domestic flights and suspension of work and schools in urban areas in southern parts of the island from the evening.
-
3 Philippine fishermen dead in South China Sea ramming incident
Three Filipino fishermen died after their fishing boat was rammed by a still unidentified foreign commercial vessel while crossing the South China Sea, the Philippine coastguard said on Wednesday.
-
Pakistan sets deadline for illegal immigrants to leave
Pakistan has ordered all illegal immigrants, including 1.73 million Afghan nationals, to leave the country by November 1 or face expulsion.
-
14-year-old arrested after 2 killed at Bangkok mall
Thai police arrested a teenage gunman suspected of killing two foreigners and wounding five people on Tuesday in a shooting spree at a luxury Bangkok mall.
-
Indian police raid media office, homes of journalists in illegal funding probe
Indian police raided the office of a news portal and the homes of journalists and writers linked to it on Tuesday as part of an investigation into suspected illegal foreign funding of the media company, two government officials said.
-
Trio win Nobel physics prize for tiny light pulses that capture changes in atoms
Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating incredibly short pulses of light that can capture processes inside atoms and molecules, in work that could advance medical diagnostics and electronics.