At least 105 have been left dead after serious explosions hit military camps in Equatorial Guinea wiping out neighbouring residential areas in the process.
Footage obtained from a broadcast by the TVGE channel showed buildings burned and flattened in a wide radius around the Nkoa Ntoma camp in the economic capital Bata, with a thick plume of black smoke rising into the sky.
Children and adults were seen being pulled from the rubble. There were chaotic scenes at the hospital in Bata, with the wounded lying on the floor awaiting treatment.
The country’s health ministry warned in a tweet that many residents could still be buried under the wreckage.
Read Also: Explosions: SON, Stakeholders Set To Re-Qualify Cylinders
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said the accident had occurred after local farmers allowed a fire in the area to burn out of control, setting alight explosives that had been badly stored by soldiers at the military camp.
‘The city of Bata has been the victim of an accident caused by the negligence of the unit in charge of storing explosives, dynamite and ammunition at the Nkoa Ntoma military camp,’ Obiang Nguema said in a statement.
“These caught fire due to stubble-burning by farmers in their fields which ultimately made these depots explode in succession.”
The defence ministry put the death toll at at least 20, with some 600 people injured.
The ‘high calibre‘ explosives set off by the fire caused ‘shockwaves‘ which razed many houses to the ground, the ministry added.
The disaster comes at an already difficult time for Equatorial Guinea, ‘due to the economic crisis caused by falling petrol prices, and the Covid-19 pandemic’, he said.
Bata is the largest city in the oil and gas-rich central African nation, with around 800,000 of the nation’s 1.4 million population living there — most of them in poverty.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
