DR Congo school fire leaves at least 14 children dead

A fire broke out Thursday in a school in the eastern DR Congo city of Bukavu, causing a stampede that killed at least 14 children, local and health sources said.

The blaze began while the children were in lessons, forcing some to try to escape by jumping from higher floors, a teacher told AFP.

Large columns of smoke were still visible around the site of the fire at midday on Thursday, an AFP correspondent saw.

"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," Simon Kasamira, a teacher at Ujamaa primary school, told AFP at a clinic where he had been admitted.

"Parents came from all over looking for their children. That's when I saw a huge fire engulfing our school built of wooden planks," he added.

Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, has been controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 group since February 2025 after the anti-government group stepped up its campaign to seize swathes of mineral-rich eastern DRC.

The city on the shores of Lake Kivu is known for its wooden houses built on hillsides and deadly fires often break out there.

The fire started near a school in the Bagira district on the city's northern outskirts early on Thursday "while the children were in the middle of class", local leader Patrice Buduge told AFP.

"This was followed by a violent stampede that forced students to trample over one another or look for a dangerous way out; many of them fainted and others lost consciousness," he said.

He said the provisional toll was "more than 500 homes burned and 27 deaths".

AFP was not able to independently verify the toll with other official sources.

"We received around 50 students, including several teachers, in a critical state of asphyxia," said Christophe Zigashane, a nurse in a neighbouring clinic.

"Among them, 10 were dead and four others died at the scene. That makes a total of 14 deaths, all under 10 years old," he said.

He said that 27 people including two teachers had been transferred in a critical state to other hospitals in the city.

The fire devastated a wide, densely built area on a hillside. Residents picked their way through the debris of charred houses, strewn with crumpled sheets of metal.

A fire in October killed 14 people, mostly children, in Bukavu.

They 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.

Last week, a fire at a wedding in the capital Kinshasa killed 12 people.