At least 129 people died during an attempted jailbreak at the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Tuesday. It was the latest crisis to hit an overcrowded detention facility notorious for conditions that human rights groups have long decried as inhumane.
A stampede was to blame for most of the deaths, but at least 24 inmates were killed by gunfire as they tried to escape from the Makala Central Prison early on Monday, according to Congo’s interior minister, Jacquemain Shabani. He said on the platform X that 59 people had been injured and that there had been “some cases of women raped,” without providing further details. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was unclear if any inmates had escaped.
Makala is the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities. Its intended capacity is 1,500 people but it has held at least 12,000 inmates, according to an October 2023 report from Amnesty International, the human rights organization.
The violence occurred as President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo is in Beijing for a forum on China-Africa cooperation, and adds to the challenges facing the Central African country. Home to more than 100 million people, Congo is battling multiple crises, including a deadly mpox outbreak and a conflict in its eastern region that has killed more than six million people and displaced millions of others over the past three decades.
Gunfire erupted Monday night in the prison, according to local news reports and videos posted on social media. Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a well-known Congolese journalist who served time at Makala last year but has since been released, shared a video showing a chaotic scene, with inmates running outside as shots rang out around them. In another video he shared that was filmed at night, several inmates are standing around what appears to be a corpse within the prison grounds.
Several videos verified by The New York Times as being filmed inside the prison complex showed the aftermath of the attempted jailbreak.
In one, a large crowd stands around at least 25 lifeless bodies lined up in a central alleyway between prison blocks. Bodies were loaded onto a truck and driven from the grounds in another video filmed by the eastern perimeter of the prison complex, while a third video showed thick black smoke billowing from a building near the prison’s entrance.
Mr. Shabani, the interior minister, said that the inmates who died from bullet wounds had been shot “after warning.” The spokesman for Congo’s government, Patrick Muyaya, was traveling with Mr. Tshisekedi in Beijing and did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Human rights groups have long denounced horrifying detention conditions at the Makala prison, a facility built in 1957, before Congo became independent from Belgium, and which has had few renovations since.
Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, the president of the Bill Clinton Foundation for Peace, a nonprofit based in Kinshasa.
Undated videos shared earlier this summer by Mr. Bujakera, the Congolese journalist, show haggard inmates crammed in detention rooms and restrooms, unable to sit or properly lie down.
Malachy Browne contributed reporting.
Read More: At Least 129 People Die in Jailbreak at Congo’s Largest Prison
