A Bukavu school fire kills at least 24 children in M23-held South Kivu
Vice-governor Dunia Masumbuko Bwenge said 19 girls and five boys died after flames hit Ujamaa and Furaha primary schools and about 300 wooden houses in Chimpunda. Twenty-nine people were in treatment, 21 of them in intensive care.
Bukavu2 min read
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A fire in Bukavu, the South Kivu capital held by the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 alliance, killed at least 24 schoolchildren on Thursday and burned two primary schools and about 300 wooden houses, according to the rebel-appointed vice-governor and the movement's own statement.
Dunia Masumbuko Bwenge, vice-governor of South Kivu in the administration installed by AFC/M23, told Reuters the dead were 19 girls and five boys. Lawrence Kanyuka, a spokesman for the movement, gave the same child count. The alliance said 29 people were in medical care, 21 of them in intensive care, with 17 at Kadutu General Hospital and four at Bukavu Provincial General Hospital.
United Nations Radio Okapi placed the fire at Ujamaa and Furaha primary schools and a nearby settlement around 8 a.m. local time in the Chimpunda neighbourhood. Local leader Patrice Buduge, speaking to AFP, described a stampede after the flames reached classrooms. Students trampled one another or tried exits that were already unsafe. Some fainted. A teacher told AFP that children jumped from upper floors. Nurse Christophe Zigashane, at a neighbouring clinic, said his ward received about 50 students and several teachers with smoke injuries. He counted 14 dead under the age of 10 at that one site, ten who arrived dead and four who died there.
The toll moved through the day. A witness told Reuters he helped load 17 bodies, men as well as children, into an ambulance. A health centre reported ten bodies. Another hospital said it had taken in more than 50 students and that 14 of them died. Corneille Nangaa, coordinator of the rebel alliance, first spoke of about ten dead before the administration raised the figure. Buduge separately told AFP of more than 500 houses and 27 deaths. Those last two numbers have not been aligned with the vice-governor's account. The figure that both the administration and the AFC/M23 statement will stand behind for now is 24 children.
The cause is not established. The movement said an investigation is open. Bukavu sits on the southern shore of Lake Kivu. Much of the city is built of wood on steep streets. Fires move fast there in the dry months. That fact does not identify a source. It does explain why two schools and a housing cluster can be lost in a morning.
Bukavu has been under AFC/M23 control since February 2025, when the alliance took the city during a wider offensive in the mineral belt of the east. Kinshasa does not run the hospitals that received Thursday's wounded. The United Nations radio service can report. It cannot govern the inquiry. Parents who want a cause will get it, if they get it, from the same authority that now counts the dead.
Eastern Congo is already inside a Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak that has passed 3,000 deaths and 6,000 confirmed cases across six provinces. Thursday's fire is a separate event. It lands on a health system that is already carrying that outbreak, a displaced population and a war. Twenty-four children is a school-morning number. It will sit beside those other ledgers whether or not the investigation names a cause.
