BUKAVU, DR Congo (AFP)—A fire ripped through a school in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Bukavu on Thursday, sparking 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.

“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,” Simon Kasamira, a teacher at Ujamaa primary school, told AFP at a clinic where he had been admitted.

“Parents came from all over looking for their children. That’s when I saw a huge fire engulfing our school built of wooden planks,” he added.

Smoke rose from the site of the fire and locals picked through the wreckage, an AFP correspondent saw.

Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, has been controlled since February 2025 by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group after stepping up its campaign to seize swathes of mineral-rich eastern DRC.

The city on the shores of Lake Kivu is known for its wooden houses built on hillsides, where deadly fires often break out.

– ‘Violent stampede’ –

The fire started near a school in the Bagira district on the city’s northern outskirts early on Thursday “while the children were in the middle of class”, local leader Patrice Buduge told AFP.

“This was followed by a violent stampede that forced students to trample over one another or look for a dangerous way out; many of them fainted and others lost consciousness,” he said.

He said the provisional toll was “more than 500 homes burned and 27 deaths”.

The M23 in a statement later reported a toll of “24 dead, including 19 girls and five boys”, as well as “29 people receiving treatment in medical facilities”.

AFP could not independently verify the toll with other official sources.

The armed group has driven out the government administration and silenced civil society organisations in areas under its control.

“We received around 50 students, including several teachers, in a critical state of asphyxia,” said Christophe Zigashane, a nurse in a neighbouring clinic.

“Among them, 10 were dead and four others died at the scene. That makes a total of 14 deaths, all under 10 years old,” he said.

He said that 27 people including two teachers had been transferred in a critical state to other hospitals in the city.

The fire devastated a wide, densely built area on a hillside. Residents picked their way through the debris of charred houses, strewn with crumpled sheets of metal.

A fire in October killed 14 people, mostly children, in Bukavu.

Blazes are common in Congolese cities, which largely lack firefighting equipment, and are often caused by a lack of spacing between buildings and illegal connections to the power grid, specialists say.

Last week, a fire at a wedding in the capital Kinshasa killed 12 people.