OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) – A series of explosions in a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 600 on Sunday, officials said.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said in a note read on state television that the explosion was due to “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata. He said the explosion occurred at 4 pm local time.
“The impact of the explosion caused damage to almost all of Bata’s houses and buildings,” said the president in the statement, which was in Spanish.
The defense ministry released a statement late Sunday saying that a fire at an arms depot in the barracks caused high-caliber ammunition to explode. The agency said the provisional death toll was 20 and 600 injured, adding that the cause of the explosions would be fully investigated.
Previously, the Ministry of Health tweeted that 17 people were killed and the president’s statement mentioned 15 dead.
Equatorial Guinea, a small West African country of 1.3 million people located in southern Cameroon, was a colony of Spain until it gained its independence in 1968.
State television showed a huge cloud of smoke rising above the blast site as the crowds fled, with many people shouting “we don’t know what happened, but everything is destroyed”.
The Ministry of Health has called for blood donors and voluntary health workers to go to the Regional Hospital de Bata, one of three hospitals that treat the wounded.
The ministry tweeted that its health professionals are treating the wounded at the site of the tragedy and in medical facilities, but fear that there are still people missing under the rubble.
Images in the local media seen by The Associated Press show people screaming and crying running through the streets amid rubble and smoke. The roofs of the houses were uprooted and the wounded were transported to a hospital.
The explosions came as a shock to the oil-rich Central African nation. Chancellor Simeón Oyono Esono Angue met with foreign ambassadors and asked for help.
“It is important for us to ask for help from our sister countries in this unfortunate situation, since we have a health emergency (due to COVID-19) and the tragedy in Bata,” he said.
A doctor who called TVGE, who answered by his first name, Florentino, said that the situation was a “moment of crisis” and that the hospitals were overcrowded. He said a sports center designed for patients with COVID-19 would be used to receive minor cases.
The radio station, Rádio Macuto, said on Twitter that people were being evacuated less than four kilometers from the city because smoke can be harmful.
After the explosion, the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea recommended on Twitter that “the Spaniards stay in their homes”.
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By Sam Mednick and Joseph Wilson