BANGUI: Twenty-nine students taking their high school exams in the Central African Republic died in a stampede sparked by an exploding power transformer, the health ministry said on Thursday.
Just over 5,300 pupils were sitting the second day of the baccalaureat exams at the time of the explosion early on Wednesday afternoon in Bangui, the capital of the deeply poor nation.
In the ensuing panic, supervisors and students tried to flee, some jumping from the first floor of the school. The injured were transported by ambulance, on the back of pickup trucks or by motorbike taxi, journalists saw.
Michael Jordy Yerima, 20, survived the stampede by jumping from a first-floor window but fractured his foot. “Around me, there were other injured students, and some died on the spot,” he said. President Faustin Archange Touadera, who was attending a summit of the Gavi vaccine alliance in Brussels, announced three days of national mourning.
“I would like to express my solidarity and compassion to the parents of the deceased candidates, to the educational staff, to the students,” Touadera said in a video published on his party’s Facebook page.
According to a document circulating on social media and authenticated by the health ministry, 29 deaths were registered by hospitals in the city. “The hospital was overwhelmed by people to the point of obstructing caregivers and ambulances,” a health ministry source said.
UN peacekeepers, police and other security were seen around the Barthelemy Boganda high school and hospitals. Education Minister Aurelien-Simplice Kongbelet-Zingas said in a statement that “measures will be taken quickly to shed light on the circumstances of this incident”.
