BUKAVU (DR Congo), Aug 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) – At least four people were killed Thursday when a school under construction in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo collapsed, local authorities said.
Mayor Patience Bengheya of the Bagira district of Bukavu, a main city in the country’s east, said a prefect, the primary school director, an adviser and a teacher were killed in the collapse.
“Masons were digging while they were meeting. The masons noticed a problem and fled, and all of a sudden everything collapsed… they were buried in the rubble,” said Dieudonne Kalabarha, a painter who was working at a nearby site.
Much of eastern DR Congo sits along seismic fault lines where earthquakes occasionally provoke building collapses or volcanic eruptions, most recently in 2021 in Goma, around 100 kilometres north of Bukavu, which killed several dozen people.
But Typson Idumbo, spokesman for the government of South Kivu province, dismissed any seismic activity as the cause of the collapse, saying “there was no earthquake”.
Idumbo said a team had been sent to begin an inquiry into the accident.
Bengheya, the mayor, said suspicions were focussing on the construction company, “because they never should have allowed putting a septic tank inside” the building.
“Can you imagine if this had been when children were inside?” — NNN-AGENCIES
