They came for morning lessons. Hours later, parents were sifting through ash looking for their children. What really happened at that wooden primary school in Bukavu?

At least 26 children are dead and 25 more injured after a devastating fire and stampede tore through a primary school in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in what is already being described as one of the country's worst school tragedies in years, cbinews.tv reports.

It was sheer panic. The blaze reportedly broke out simultaneously in three different locations about 500 metres apart, according to Congolese education ministry inspectors. Within minutes, classrooms filled with smoke.

One of the most harrowing human accounts comes from Simon Kasamira, a teacher at Ujamaa who spoke to AFP from his clinic bed.

"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. "Parents came from all over, looking for their children. That's when I saw a huge fire engulfing our school built of wooden planks."

Children on higher floors had no choice but to leap from windows. Those on the ground floor were caught in a stampede. Inspectors said pupils were "trampled" after falling, while others trapped inside died from asphyxiation. By Friday morning, smoke was still rising as locals picked through the charred wreckage.

Shattered dreams in a city on edge

This isn't just a fire statistic. These were primary school children. Bukavu is a city where parents already send their kids to school against a backdrop of gunfire and uncertainty. On Thursday, many arrived at the school gates to find it gone.

Funerals for the 26 victims were expected to be held on Saturday, with the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group — which seized control of Bukavu in February 2025 — declaring three days of mourning.

Congolese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr Denis Mukwege captured the mood, posting on X: "A tragedy of such magnitude, which has shattered the dreams and futures of so many children, cannot become just another news story."

Why does this keep happening?

If you’ve followed eastern DRC, you’ll know Bukavu is heartbreakingly familiar with this kind of disaster, as cbinews.tv has previously highlighted.

1. A city built to burn: Bukavu is famous for its beautiful hillside wooden houses overlooking Lake Kivu, but that beauty is a firetrap. Houses are crammed together with almost no spacing, and there is virtually no functioning fire service. Illegal connections to the power grid are rife.

2. A disturbing pattern: The education ministry itself said this tragedy "followed a particularly concerning series of fires in Bukavu." In October last year, another blaze in the city killed 14 people, mostly children. Just last week, a fire at a wedding in the capital Kinshasa killed 12 people. Fires are common across Congolese cities.

3. A region at war: This happened in a war zone. Eastern DRC has been mired in conflict for more than three decades, with myriad armed groups fighting over its vast mineral wealth. Since M23 stepped up its offensive and took Bukavu in February 2025, basic services, regulation and emergency response have collapsed even further. The education ministry's report noted Thursday's fire also destroyed hundreds of surrounding homes, leaving hundreds more families homeless.

Why it matters?

Why should the world pay attention to a school fire in South Kivu?

Because it exposes two colliding crises. First, the chronic neglect of urban safety in the DRC. When schools are made of wooden planks with no fire exits, no extinguishers, and no fire brigade to call, a single spark becomes a mass casualty event.

Second, the cost of conflict on children. UNICEF’s involvement tells you everything — in a region where schools should be safe havens, they have become death traps. When armed groups control major cities, investigations stall, building codes vanish, and children pay the highest price.

What happens next?

Both authorities in Kinshasa and the M23 administration in Bukavu have now called for an investigation to determine the cause of the blaze — particularly why fires started in three separate locations at once.

But locals want more than an investigation. Dr Mukwege and others are demanding "urgent measures" to provide humanitarian aid to the affected families, many of whom lost both their children and their homes in one morning.

The immediate next steps are:

* Identification and burial of victims, with funerals planned for Saturday

* Emergency medical care for the 25 injured pupils

* Humanitarian support for families whose hillside homes were destroyed

* A full forensic probe into whether the fire was accidental, caused by electrical faults, or something more sinister

For now, a community is in mourning, and a stark question hangs over Bukavu: how many more children have to die before wooden schools and overcrowded hillsides are finally made safe?

Source: cbinews.tv.

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