Bukavu Buries 26 Children Killed in School Fire and Stampede as Investigation Questions Mount

Since the fire broke out at Ujamaa Primary School on Friday, September 11, families in Bukavu buried 26 children in a mass funeral held today, Monday, September 14, according to Euronews and Africanews. Hundreds attended, some carrying photographs of the dead.

The fire started around 9 a.m. local time while students sat in class, according to a report from the Congolese Education Ministry cited by AFP and carried by Channels TV. As flames spread through the wooden structure, some children jumped from upper floors to escape. Others ran for the doors. The panic triggered a stampede that trampled students trying to get out.

The education ministry's inspectors found that some victims died from being trampled after falling, while others who couldn't get out died of asphyxiation. UNICEF says 25 additional children were injured, with 21 patients at one point in intensive care.

One detail from the ministry's report raises a question that has gone unanswered: fires broke out simultaneously at three separate locations roughly 500 meters apart. No source has offered an explanation for how that happened, and no cause has been determined.

A teacher's account

Simon Kasamira, a teacher at Ujamaa, described the scene to AFP from a clinic where he was being treated. "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," he said. He told AFP that parents flooded the area searching for their children as the fire consumed the school, which was built from wooden planks.

The blaze didn't stop at the school. Local officials estimate roughly 300 homes were destroyed or damaged in the densely built Kadutu commune, a hillside neighborhood of wooden houses typical of Bukavu.

Death toll shifted over three days, with a discrepancy in who said what

The numbers moved fast and inconsistently. Local and medical sources put the toll at 14 on Friday, the day of the fire. By Saturday, UNICEF's tally reached 26 dead and 25 injured, the figure that held through the weekend, according to the International Business Times.

Euronews and Africanews report that M23 authorities initially put the death toll at 24, broken down as 19 girls and five boys, before UNICEF raised it to 26. Channels TV and Punch Nigeria, both citing AFP, instead attribute a breakdown of 20 girls and six boys to M23, a total of 26. The discrepancy in how M23's own initial count was reported has not been resolved by any of the outlets covering the story.

Who investigates a city two governments both claim?

Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, has been under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group since February 2025, after the group intensified its campaign to seize territory across mineral-rich eastern Congo. M23 declared three days of mourning starting Friday.

Both the national government in Kinshasa and the M23 administration running Bukavu have called for an investigation into what caused the fire, according to Euronews and Africanews. But as the International Business Times pointed out, that raises a jurisdictional problem: the Education Ministry that produced Friday's inspection report answers to Kinshasa, a government that does not control the city where the fire happened. How, or whether, those two authorities coordinate on an actual investigation is an open question.

When the government nominally responsible for education standards has no operational control over the ground where a tragedy occurred, establishing basic facts, let alone accountability for a wooden school building with no apparent fire safety measures, becomes far harder. No timeline for a completed investigation has been announced by either side.

A pattern, not an isolated tragedy

Bukavu has seen this before. A fire in the city killed 14 people, mostly children, in October, according to AFP reporting carried by Channels TV and Punch Nigeria. A separate fire at a wedding in Kinshasa killed 12 people the week before Friday's blaze. Specialists cited by AFP say fires are common in Congolese cities because of tight building spacing and illegal power-grid connections, combined with a near-total lack of firefighting equipment.

Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege called for urgent humanitarian aid for those affected, writing on X that "a tragedy of such magnitude, which has shattered the dreams and futures of so many children, cannot become just another news story."

Whether it becomes one depends on whether an investigation with real findings ever materializes in a city where the government that regulates schools and the authority that controls the ground don't answer to each other.