KINSHASA: Twenty-six people were electrocuted on Wednesday when an overhead high-voltage cable fell into a drainage ditch at a market in DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa, local authorities said, giving a provisional toll.

“The cable snapped and the live end of it fell into a ditch that was filled with water after morning rain. At present, 26 people have died from electrocution,” Charles Mbutamuntu, the spokesman for the Kinshasa provincial government, told AFP.

The Kinshasa tragedy occurred as news broke of a massacre in the troubled east of the DR Congo in which at least 40 displaced people were killed late Tuesday by machete-wielding militiamen, according to a monitoring group and local sources.

At the popular Matadi-Kibala food market in the west of Kinshasa, “most of the people killed were traders and customers, and some passers-by,” Mbutamuntu said. “The bodies are being taken to the morgue and an investigation has been opened to establish responsibility.”