Crush at Burundi prayer meeting leaves eight dead

A packed evangelical service in Bujumbura turned deadly on Saturday night, when a crowd crush killed eight people and left nine hurt.

The venue was a school in the city, where popular preacher Chris Ndikumana had drawn thousands of worshippers. As his sermon wrapped up late at night, the crowd surged toward the exit, and a wall near the gate gave way under the pressure. People were trampled trying to get out.

A teacher at the school described the chaos to AFP: too many people, all trying to leave at once, in the dark.

Hospitals in the city bore the brunt. Six bodies , five women, one man, were brought to King Khaled Hospital, which was also treating four injured. Two more people died at a military hospital, where five others received care.

Police noted something telling: almost none of the victims had visible wounds. Only two showed physical injuries. That pattern points to suffocation, not blunt trauma, as what actually killed most of them.

So far, Ndikumana and the organisers have stayed silent on what happened.

The preacher isn’t a small-time figure, his Kanguka (“Wake Up”) ministry pulls huge crowds across the continent, and his YouTube following tops a million. Part of his appeal: many believers credit him with the power to heal through prayer.

This isn’t an isolated case, either. Similar tragedies have hit religious gatherings elsewhere in Africa, a 2020 stampede for holy oil in Tanzania killed 20; a 2022 food distribution outside a Nigerian church in Port Harcourt killed 31; and later that same year, thieves preying on a crowd leaving a Liberian gathering triggered a crush that killed 29, including 11 children.