Bukavu buries 26 children after fire and stampede at Ujamaa school

Families in Bukavu buried 26 children on 14 September, three days after fire and a stampede tore through Ujamaa Primary School in the Chimpunda neighbourhood of Kadutu commune. UNICEF said at least 26 pupils died and 25 were hurt. M23 authorities, who have run the city since February 2025, first counted 24 dead, 19 girls and five boys, then accepted the higher figure.

The fire started around 9 am local time on Thursday, 11 September, while class was in session. Teacher Simon Kasamira told AFP he heard screaming, saw children jump from upper floors, and then saw the wooden school engulfed. Inspectors from the Congolese education ministry wrote that pupils were trampled at the exits and that some of those trapped died of asphyxiation. About 900 students were in the two schools on the site when the fire began, a teacher at the scene told Xinhua.

The same ministry report said fires started at three points about 500 metres apart. That detail is why both Kinshasa and the M23 administration have called for an investigation. No cause has been named. In a hillside city of wooden houses, an accident is common. Three separate ignitions are not an explanation. They are a question.

A city that knows fire and had not seen this

Local officials said around 300 houses were damaged. At one point 21 patients were in intensive care. Xinhua, citing city authorities late on 11 September, put the student death toll as high as 29. UNICEF's 26 is the number the funeral used. The gap between those counts is the usual fog of a disaster in a war city. It does not change the fact of a mass grave of schoolchildren.

Bashengzei Chrispin, standing at the ruin of his house, told Xinhua that Bukavu is used to fires and had never lost so many schoolchildren in one. Kadutu is dense. Wooden classrooms sit among wooden homes. When the school went up, the neighbourhood went with it.

Bukavu is the capital of South Kivu and sits on Lake Kivu. The Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 alliance took it in February 2025. The rebel administration declared three days of mourning. Funerals that had been expected on Saturday were held on Monday, with rows of coffins and photographs. Hundreds came. Parents carried pictures because that is what is left when a classroom burns faster than a child can reach the stair.

What an investigation would have to answer

Three ignition points. Two wooden schools. A stampede on the stairs and at the doors. No named cause. Those are the facts that survive the funeral. An inquiry that only counts bodies will not tell Kadutu whether this was a kitchen fire that jumped, an electrical fault that ran along a street, or something else. Kinshasa and M23 have both asked for answers. They do not share a government. They now share a casualty list.

For aid agencies the work is immediate: burns, crushed lungs, families without a house or a child. For anyone writing about eastern Congo the number to keep is 26 children at Ujamaa on a Thursday morning, in a city already living under an armed group, in a neighbourhood built of wood.