The densely populated capital of the South Kivu region fell at the beginning of 2025 to the M23, whose resurgence has poured hot oil on the flames of the mineral-rich Congolese east’s three decades of conflict.
Bukavu is famous for its quintessential wooden houses built into cliff faces, often without regard for health and safety regulations in the haphazard city sprawl.
The fire, which raged overnight Sunday to Monday, ignited in the Mosala neighbourhood of M23-run Bukavu’s Kadutu commune, with a string of buildings going up in smoke, local sources said.
Fourteen victims had been identified on Monday, including one mother and her eight children and another woman with her four kids, Mosala leader Patrick Lubala told AFP.
The South Kivu authorities, which the Congolese government still appoints, confirmed that toll to AFP.
The M23-appointed authorities meanwhile gave the same number of deaths without going into further details.
“We were alerted around midnight. The fire, whose cause is still unknown, started in a wooden house,” Mosala local Elisha Matabaro, 36, told AFP.
Several residents destroyed houses in an attempt to stop the fire from spreading, an AFP reporter saw.
Jean-Buhendwa Musole, who escaped untouched, managed to save several personal items from the flames that burnt his house to the ground.
“We don’t know where to go, especially in this rainy season,” Musole said, stood with his family in front of the ashes of his home.
Former Bukavu civil protection coordinator Maitre Adolphe Bandeke told AFP the disaster was the latest in a “long series of blazes” in the city.
Bandeke blamed a lack of proper distancing between buildings and illegal connections to the power grid “in a city which does not have any fire trucks”.