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 upheaval to hit an overcrowded detention facility notorious for conditions that human rights groups have long decried as inhumane.
Inmates said they had been held in stifling cells without water and electricity, and some had initially broken out to escape the heat.
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 late Tuesday, 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 holds at least 15,000, Congo’s deputy minister for justice, Samuel Mbemba, said in an interview.
The violence occurred as President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo was 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.
With outdoor temperatures near 90 degrees, the inmates had been without running water or electricity to power fans for more than a day and a half, according to four inmates who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their safety inside the prison.
Many felt that they were suffocating, one said, and on Sunday evening some broke the doors of their cells to get out.
A Congolese intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the events publicly, said guards opened fire in the early hours of Monday morning when inmates tried to escape from the precinct of the prison.
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 very graphic video, 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. It was unclear what had happened to the prison’s water and power.
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. Its population ranges from those convicted of petty crimes to high-profile and political prisoners.
Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human rights advocate based in Kinshasa. He and one inmate said that as of Tuesday, there was still no running water and nothing to eat, as a food depot had burned.
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.
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