KIGALI, Feb 3: Two strong earthquakes shook the African Great Lakes region on Sunday, killing at least 34 people in Rwanda and six in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to officials and hospital sources.

Hundreds of people were wounded, many with fractured limbs, after the two quakes struck close together along the western Rift Valley fault.

Houses crumbled and deep cracks spread up the walls of buildings in the centre of Bukavu in DR Congo, near the epicentre of the first quake which measured 6.0 on the open-ended Richter scale.

It struck at 0734 GMT some 20 kilometres north of the DR Congo town of Bukavu, while a second quake of 5.0 magnitude was recorded at 1056 GMT, Francois Lukaya of the Goma volcanological observatory in Nord-Kivu told AFP.

People ran out of churches packed for Sunday mass as the walls shook.

“According to the figures I have at the moment, 34 people are dead,” said Rwandan local government minister Protais Musoni on Sunday afternoon.

Across the border to the east, Radio Rwanda said 10 people were killed “straight away when a church collapsed” in the Rusizi district of western province and 13 others died in Rusizi and Nyamesheke districts.

Local authorities in DR Congo said six people had died in the Sud-Kivu region, according to UN-sponsored Okapi radio.

Provincial health officer Manou Burole said 55 people had been wounded there.

Several dozen injured were admitted to the city’s general hospital and at least 12 casualties to the Panzi hospital, medical sources said.

In the DR Congo town of Kabare, north of Bukavu, the walls of a church collapsed on the congregation during the mass, injuring 37, including five seriously, priest Leon Shamavu said.

The quakes were also strongly felt in neighbouring Burundi, south of Rwanda, Francois Lukaya, a scientist at the Goma observatory in North Kivu said.—AFP