with some pupils leaping from windows on high floors to escape the carnage. The blaze in the city of Bukavu on Thursday began around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) 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 said. Smoke rose from the site of the fire as locals picked through the wreckage, an AFP correspondent saw. The fire sparked a stampede as the children struggled to escape, with students "trampled" after falling down, inspectors from the Congolese education ministry said in a report on Friday. Those trapped inside suffered from "asphyxiation", it said. "Fires broke out simultaneously at three different locations about 500 metres (yards) apart," the report added. UNICEF said the disaster injured 25 children. Bukavu, a major city and the capital of South Kivu province, has been controlled since February 2025 by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group after it stepped up a campaign to seize swathes of mineral-rich eastern DRC. (Bssnews)