By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
No fewer than 20 people were on Sunday killed and about 600 others wounded in a series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea.
The country’s President, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, said the explosion, which occured at 4pm local time, was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata.
His words: “The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata.”
The defense ministry also confirmed what the president said on the incident.
In a statement late Sunday, the ministry stated that a fire at a weapons depot in the barracks caused the explosion of high-caliber ammunition.
It said that the provisional death toll was 20, adding that the cause of the explosions will be fully investigated.
The country’s president had said that the fire might have been due to residents burning the fields surrounding the barracks.
State television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the explosion site as crowds fled, with many people crying out “we don’t know what happened, but it is all destroyed.”
Images on local media seen by The Associated Press show people screaming and crying running through the streets amid debris and smoke.
Roofs of houses were ripped off and wounded people were being carried into a hospital.
Equatorial Guinea, a West African country of 1.3 million people located south of Cameroon, was a colony of Spain until it gained its independence in 1968. Bata has roughly 175,000 inhabitants.
Besides, the Health Ministry had tweeted that 17 were killed. The ministry made a call for blood donors and volunteer health workers to go to the Regional Hospital de Bata, one of three hospitals treating the wounded.
The ministry said its health workers were treating the injured at the site of the tragedy and in medical facilities, but feared people were still missing under the rubble.
The blasts were a shock for the oil rich African nation.
Foreign Minister, Simeón Oyono Esono Angue, met with foreign ambassadors and asked for aid.
“It is important for us to ask our brother countries for their assistance in this lamentable situation since we have a health emergency (due to COVID-19) and the tragedy in Bata,” he said.
A doctor calling into TVGE, who went by his first name, Florentino, said the situation was a “moment of crisis” and that the hospitals were overcrowded.
He said a sports centre set up for COVID-19 patients would be used to receive minor cases.
Following the blast, the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea recommended on Twitter that “Spanish nationals stay in their homes.”