Two earthquakes in the Great Lakes region of Africa killed more than 40 on Sunday and injured a lot more. The first quake which measured 6.0 on the open-ended Richter scale and struck 12 miles north of the DR Congo town of Bukavu. The second quake of 5.0 magnitude was recorded later in the day.

"According to the figures I have at the moment, 34 people are dead," said Rwandan local government minister Protais Musoni on Sunday afternoon to AFP in an interview.

At least ten people died when a church collapsed during mass in Rwanda. The 6.0 magnitude quake represented the strongest quake to hit the region since 2005 when the area was hit with a 6.8 magnitude quake, the US Geological Survey reports.

"There is lots of damage. Many buildings have been hit. Lots of houses have completely collapsed," official Jacqueline Chenard, a member of the Democratic Republic of Congo's United Nations peacekeeping mission, told the BBC.

Both quakes, which struck at 0734 GMT and 1056 GMT, occurred in a valley called Africa's Great Rift Valley, located on a seismically active fault line. The Great Rift Valley runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in East Africa and is approximately 3,700 miles in length.