More than 120 people were killed and several others injured during an attempted prison break in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the authorities of the Central African nation reported on Tuesday.
The incident at Makala central prison – the country’s largest penitentiary – in the capital, Kinshasa, on Monday saw the administrative building, the hospital, and the food depots destroyed by fire, Congolese Interior Minister Shabani Lukoo said in a statement.
“The provisional toll is 129 dead,” the minister wrote on X (formerly Twitter), saying that 24 of the victims were killed by gunfire and the rest died from “jostling or suffocation.”
During the riot, 59 people were injured and some women were raped, according to Lukoo, who added that the situation is now under control.
Earlier on Monday, videos purported to be from inside the prison showed several bodies on the ground. However, Deputy Justice Minister Samuel Mbemba Kabuya told Top Congo FM that the “prison was not attacked from the outside.” He went on to say that “prisoners from wing 4” of the facility attempted to escape, but none of them succeeded.
Justice Minister Constant Mutamba said investigations were underway to “identify and severely punish” those who instigated the “premeditated acts of sabotage” at the Makala prison.
In response to the incident, Mutamba announced interim measures, including a ban on the transfer of detainees to the prison and the construction of a new prison outside the capital as part of decongestion efforts.
The Makala central prison is DR Congo’s main penitentiary, with a capacity for 1,500 people, but which holds over 12,000 inmates, the majority of whom are pretrial detainees, Amnesty International said in its latest report.
This week’s jailbreak is not the first of its kind in a country embroiled in a long-running deadly conflict fueled by militants. In 2017, members of the separatist religious sect Bundu dia Kongo stormed the Makala prison, freeing their leader and 50 others. Ne Mwanda Nsemi, who died last year, had been detained along with many of his followers.