The death toll from a stampede during high school exams in the Central African Republic has been lowered to 20, officials have said, from an earlier count of 29.

The stampede started after the explosion of a power transformer at Barthelemy Boganda high school in Bangui on Wednesday afternoon (local time).

Around 5300 pupils were sitting the second day of the Baccalaureate exams at the time of the incident.

“Twenty deaths have been recorded among our youth in various morgues,” Communication Minister Maxime Balalou said.

He added 65 remained in hospital for observation as of Thursday (local time), including four in critical condition.

Balalou said the head of one of the two exam centres at the Barthelemy Boganda high school had died “due to illness linked to the event”.

Panicked students and staff scrambled to escape, with some leaping from the school’s first floor, witnesses said.

Wounded students were rushed to hospital by ambulance, pickup truck and motorbike taxi, according to AFP reporters at the scene.

President Faustin Archange Touadera, attending a Gavi vaccine summit in Brussels, declared three days of national mourning.

The Central African Republic is among the poorest countries in the world. Since independence from France in 1960, it has endured a succession of coups, authoritarian rulers and civil wars.

The latest civil war started more than a decade ago.

The Government has secured the main cities and violence has subsided in recent years.

But fighting occasionally erupts in remote regions between rebels and the national army, which is backed by Wagner mercenaries and Rwandan troops.

– Agence France-Presse