Six children died in a fire in the DRC camp for landslide victims
Six children died in a fire in the DRC camp for landslide victims
At least six children have been killed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after a fire broke out in a camp for people displaced by floods. The camp in the town of Kalehe has been home to about 420 families from Bushushu, a village on Lake Kivu near the eastern border with Rwanda. The village was hit by heavy rains and landslides that killed about 400 people in May. The fire broke out on Saturday afternoon and killed several children - "two little boys and four little girls, aged one to five years", said Thomas Bakenga, the manager of the Kalehe area. He said that four adults have been hospitalized for burns. "The fire started in the hut in the middle of the area where the child was cooking when the parents were not there," he said.
About 360 plastic tarpaulin huts covered with grass were destroyed by the fire, he noted. "We tried to save them, but it was hopeless," Bakenga said. "The fire destroyed everything." The number of victims was confirmed by the head of the local civic group, Delphin Birimbi, who called on the government and non-governmental organizations to "come to the aid of these disaster victims". The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that about 3,000 families have been left homeless after floods and mudslides in eastern DRC, an area already hit by massacres carried out by armed groups fighting against the central government.
