BUKAVU, September 15 — A fire at a primary school in Bukavu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killed at least 26 children and injured 25 others, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said on Friday, according to AFP. The blaze broke out on Thursday around 9:00 am while children were in lessons at Ujamaa primary school, forcing some pupils to leap from windows on higher floors to escape, a teacher told AFP.
Simon Kasamira, a teacher at the school, told AFP from a clinic where he had been admitted: “In the middle of class, I suddenly heard students screaming, some were jumping from the upper floors, and others were running away through the doors.” He added: “Parents came from all over looking for their children. That’s when I saw a huge fire engulfing our school built of wooden planks.” An AFP correspondent saw smoke rising from the site as locals picked through the wreckage.
Stampede and asphyxiation
The fire sparked a stampede as children struggled to escape, with students “trampled” after falling down, inspectors from the Congolese education ministry said in a report on Friday. Those trapped inside suffered from “asphyxiation,” the report said, adding: “Fires broke out simultaneously at three different locations about 500 metres apart.” The education ministry’s report and a local official said Thursday’s fire destroyed hundreds of homes.
The education ministry expressed “profound sadness” in a statement on Thursday, noting that the tragedy “followed a particularly concerning series of fires in Bukavu.” In October, a blaze in the city killed 14 people, mainly children. Last week, a fire at a wedding in the capital Kinshasa killed 12 people.
A city built of wood, and a region at war
Blazes are common in Congolese cities, which largely lack firefighting equipment, and are often caused by a lack of spacing between buildings and illegal connections to the power grid, specialists say. Bukavu, a major city and the capital of South Kivu province, sits on the shores of Lake Kivu and is known for its wooden houses built on hillsides, where deadly fires often break out.
The city has been controlled since February 2025 by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group after it stepped up a campaign to seize swathes of mineral-rich eastern DRC. M23 declared three days of mourning on Friday.
Funerals for the victims — 20 girls and six boys, according to M23 — were expected to be held on Saturday. Authorities in Kinshasa and M23 have called for an investigation to determine the cause of the blaze. The disaster sparked a wave of grief in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region mired in conflict for more than three decades with myriad armed groups fighting over its territory.
Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege called for “urgent measures” to “provide humanitarian aid” to those affected, writing on X: “A tragedy of such magnitude, which has shattered the dreams and futures of so many children, cannot become just another news story.” What happens next will hinge on the promised investigation into what started the blaze, and on whether the repeated fires in Bukavu finally draw the equipment and building safeguards the city has long gone without.
