DR Congo school fire stampede death toll rises to 26: UNICEF

A fire and stampede at a school in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 26 children, the UN children's agency said on Friday, with some pupils leaping from windows on high floors to escape the carnage.

The blaze in the city of Bukavu on Thursday began around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) while the children were in lessons, forcing some to try to escape by jumping from higher floors, a teacher told AFP.

"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 said.

Smoke rose from the site of the fire as locals picked through the wreckage, an AFP correspondent saw.

The fire sparked a stampede as the 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", it said.

"Fires broke out simultaneously at three different locations about 500 metres (yards) apart," the report added.

UNICEF said the disaster injured 25 children.

Bukavu, a major city and the capital of South Kivu province, 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 -- are expected to be held on Saturday.

Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu, is known for its wooden houses built on hillsides, where deadly fires often break out.

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.

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.

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.

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

The education ministry's report and a local official said Thursday's fire destroyed hundreds of homes.

Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege called for "urgent measures" to "provide humanitarian aid" to those affected.

"A tragedy of such magnitude, which has shattered the dreams and futures of so many children, cannot become just another news story," he wrote on X.