At least 26 children have been killed and 25 injured after a fire swept through two schools in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, triggering a stampede in which terrified pupils were trampled or jumped from upper-floor windows to escape the flames.
The disaster struck Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, on Thursday morning while lessons were under way. UNICEF confirmed on Friday that at least 26 children had died, while 25 others were injured and receiving medical treatment. Eleven children who became separated from their parents have since been reunited with their families.
The fire affected the Ujamaa primary school and neighbouring Furaha school, as well as homes in the surrounding district. Local officials said the blaze began in a residential building before spreading rapidly through the densely populated neighbourhood, where many structures are made from timber.
Simon Kasamira, a teacher at Ujamaa primary school, described scenes of panic as the fire engulfed the school.
Residents gather near the site of a deadly fire in Bukavu, on September 11, 2026. 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.
“Students were screaming, some were jumping from the upper floors, and others were running away through the doors,” he told AFP from a clinic where he was being treated.
Parents rushed to the area searching for their children as smoke filled the sky and flames consumed buildings. Witnesses described a chaotic evacuation in which pupils struggled to escape through narrow exits.
A report by inspectors from the Congolese education ministry said some children were trampled after falling during the rush to safety, while others trapped inside died from asphyxiation. The report said fires broke out at three locations about 500 metres apart, adding to the confusion surrounding the disaster.
The South Kivu provincial government said 19 girls and seven boys were among the dead and warned that the death toll could rise. Earlier figures from the Rwanda-backed M23 administration that controls Bukavu had put the number of fatalities at 24, while other
reports gave differing figures as hospitals struggled to account for the large number of casualties.
The scale of the destruction extended beyond the schools. Local authorities said hundreds of homes were destroyed, while health centres were overwhelmed by injured pupils arriving in school uniforms.
The cause of the fire remained unclear. Authorities in Kinshasa and the M23 administration have called for an investigation into how the blaze began and why it spread so rapidly.
M23 declared three days of mourning for the victims. Funerals were expected to take place on Saturday.
Bukavu, a city of more than one million people on the shores of Lake Kivu, has experienced repeated deadly fires. Dense construction, wooden homes, inadequate fire-fighting equipment and unsafe electricity connections have made parts of the city particularly vulnerable to rapidly spreading flames.
The latest disaster comes less than a year after another fire in Bukavu killed 14 people, many of them children. A separate fire at a wedding in Kinshasa last week also caused multiple deaths, underlining concerns about fire safety and emergency response in Congolese cities.
The tragedy has added another layer of suffering to a region already battered by decades of armed conflict. Bukavu has been under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 movement since February 2025, after the group captured the city during an offensive across mineral-rich eastern Congo.
The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and severely strained public services, including healthcare and education.
UNICEF said the psychological consequences of the fire could be profound for children who survived. The agency is providing mental-health and psychosocial support to affected children, families and community members while helping pupils return to education.
Denis Mukwege, the Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, called for urgent humanitarian assistance to families affected by the blaze.
“A tragedy of such magnitude,” he said, “cannot become just another news story.”
The authorities now face pressure to establish not only what caused the fire, but why so many children were unable to escape safely from buildings where they should have been protected.
With families still mourning and some children receiving treatment, the full human cost of the Bukavu disaster may not yet have been counted.