At least 29 killed as fire and stampede tear through two Bukavu schools
Twenty-four of the dead were schoolchildren, 19 of them girls. Around 300 wooden homes burned with the schools in the rebel-held Congolese city.
A fire that spread from a residential neighbourhood into two schools in the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu has killed at least 29 people, among them 24 schoolchildren, after the blaze set off a stampede among pupils who were in lessons at the time.
Of the children who died, 19 were girls and five were boys, according to Lawrence Kanyuka, a spokesman for the AFC/M23 movement that controls the city. Around 300 wooden homes burned down alongside the schools, and local officials say the toll remains provisional.
What happened at about 8am
The fire started in the Chimpunda neighbourhood of Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, at roughly 8am local time and spread into Ujamaa primary school and Furaha secondary school, according to Radio Okapi, the United Nations-operated broadcaster.
The deaths were not caused by flames alone. The fire was "followed by a violent stampede that forced students to trample over one another", a local official, Patrice Buduge, told AFP — adding that they had to "look for a dangerous way out; many of them fainted, and others lost consciousness". Some people died in the crush and others died later.
The injuries reflect that. A nurse at a local clinic, Christophe Zigashane, told AFP his facility "received around 50 students, including several teachers, in a critical state of asphyxia". Suffocation, not burns, is what filled the wards.
Kanyuka said 29 people were being treated in medical facilities, 21 of them in intensive care. Seventeen of the critically injured are at Kadutu General Hospital and four at Bukavu Provincial General Hospital.
The vice governor of South Kivu, Dunia Masumbuko Bwenge, told Reuters that the schools and about 300 wooden homes had burned. Footage verified by Al Jazeera showed flames consuming houses before reaching the two schools.
A city where the ordinary safeguards are absent
Bukavu is one of the most densely built cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, packed onto hillsides, and the Kadutu commune where the fire took hold is among its most crowded. Wooden housing built close together is what allowed a neighbourhood fire to reach a school at all.
The city has been held since February 2025 by the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 movement, which seized swathes of mineral-rich eastern DRC in an intensified campaign. That is the fact behind every other fact in this story. The authorities issuing casualty figures are rebel-appointed; the emergency response was mobilised by an armed group rather than by the state; and the investigation into the cause will be run by the same body.
The government in Kinshasa issued a statement on X without specifying casualties.
"The Ministry of National Education and New Citizenship expressed deep sorrow over the deadly fire," it said, adding that the minister had offered condolences, affirmed solidarity with families, and ordered assessments of affected schools to ensure learning continuity.
A ministry ordering safety assessments of schools it does not currently administer is a reasonable description of the limits of Congolese state authority in the east.
Not an isolated event
This is the second mass-casualty crush in the country in a matter of days. Last weekend a fire at a wedding party in DRC killed more than 20 people in a stampede.
Bukavu itself has had repeated fires in recent days, including a blaze last Sunday that destroyed more than 45 houses, according to Congolese media.
That pattern points at something more mundane than conflict: dense wooden construction, limited firefighting capacity and buildings with too few ways out. A fire in a crowded neighbourhood becomes a mass-casualty event when the people inside cannot leave quickly, and the repeated appearance of the word stampede in these accounts is a description of exits, not of panic.
What is not yet known
The cause of the fire has not been established. Local media describe the death toll as provisional, and the figures now circulating have moved through the day — the count of children killed and the overall count including adults are different numbers, and both may rise.
Nor is there an independent verification of the casualty figures. They come from the movement administering the city and from local health workers, reported by AFP, Reuters and Radio Okapi. That is the best available record and it is not the same as an audited one.
The AFC/M23 said emergency teams had been deployed and had contained the fire, that it had mobilised assistance for those affected, and called for calm, solidarity and vigilance while investigations continue.
What is settled is the shape of it: a fire in a crowded neighbourhood at the start of a school day, two schools in its path, and children who could not get out of the way of each other.
