A fire at a wedding party in Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa left at least 22 people dead, the regional mayor said on Saturday. Several others were injured.
The fire started on Friday night and continued into early Saturday in a building in Lingwala in northern Kinshasa. The building’s narrow hallways were constricted by people trying to escape the fire.
Several people – some alive and some dead – were laid by the roadside as attendees tried to help those who were still alive.
The mayor of Lingwala, Norbert Mushinga, told the Congolese Press Agency that the provisional death toll was 22. He said the toll could rise further.
The exact cause of the fire was unconfirmed. “It is a tragedy,” Jacquemin Shabani, Congo’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, said. The minister visited the site on Saturday morning.
Deadly fires are common in densely populated areas of Kinshasa where urban development is often implemented without provisions such as fire services.