{"id":56589,"date":"2025-04-19T20:31:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T16:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/?p=56589"},"modified":"2025-04-19T20:31:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T16:01:22","slug":"at-least-143-dead-in-dr-congo-boat-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/56589\/at-least-143-dead-in-dr-congo-boat-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"At least \u06f1\u06f4\u06f3 dead in DR Congo boat fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Hundreds of passengers were crowded onto a wooden boat on the Congo River in northwest DRC on Tuesday when the blaze broke out, according to Josephine-Pacifique Lokumu, head of a delegation of national deputies from the region.<\/p>\n<p>The disaster occurred near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, at the confluence of the Ruki and the vast Congo river \u2014 the world\u2019s deepest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA first group of 131 bodies were found on Wednesday, with a further 12 fished out on Thursday and Friday. Several of them are charred,\u201d Lokumu told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Lokondo, a local civil society leader who said he helped bury the bodies, put the \u201cprovisional death toll at 145: some burned, others drowned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lokumu said the blaze was caused by a fuel explosion ignited by an onboard cooking fire.<br \/>\n\u201cA woman lit the embers for cooking. The fuel, which was not far away, exploded, killing many children and women,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The total number of passengers on board the doomed vessel was not known but Lokumu said it was in the \u201chundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some survivors were rescued and admitted to hospital, Lokondo said.<\/p>\n<p>But on Friday, he added, \u201cseveral families were still without news of their loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A vast Central African nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers from a lack of practicable roads.<\/p>\n<p>As a result travel often occurs on lakes, the Congo River and its tributaries, where shipwrecks are frequent and the death tolls often heavy.<\/p>\n<p>A chronic absence of passenger lists often complicates search operations.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2023, at least 47 people died after a boat navigating the Congo sank in Equateur.<\/p>\n<p>More than 20 people died in October last year when a boat capsized on Lake Kivu in eastern DRC, according to local authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Another shipwreck on Lake Kivu claimed around 100 lives in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>RHM\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of passengers were crowded onto a wooden boat on the Congo River in northwest DRC on Tuesday when the blaze broke out, according to Josephine-Pacifique Lokumu, head of a delegation of national deputies from the region. The disaster occurred near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, at the confluence of the Ruki and the vast [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[7103,7109,7100,7110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accidents-en","category-health-en","category-international-en","category-politic-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zardis.net\/news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}