Source : Perth Now news
At least 22 people have been killed in a fire at a wedding party in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital of Kinshasa.
Several other people were injured in the fire that started overnight on Friday and continued into early Saturday morning in a building in Lingwala in northern Kinshasa.
Several people – some alive and some dead – were laid by the roadside as attendees tried to help the ones who were still alive. The narrow hallways were constricted with people trying to escape the fire.
The mayor of Lingwala, Norbert Mushinga, told the Congolese Press Agency the provisional toll is 22 but said the toll could rise.
The exact cause of the fire is unconfirmed.
“It is a tragedy,” Jacquemin Shabani, Congo’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, said after visiting the site on Saturday morning
Deadly fires are common in densely populated areas of Kinshasa, especially during the dry season.
