The death toll from a series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea has risen by dozens to at least 98 after more bodies recovered, the government said on Tuesday.
The blasts on Sunday in the Mondong Nkuantoma district of the coastal town of Bata also injured at least 615 people, authorities said. The government said that 316 of the injured have been released and 299 remain in care at various hospitals in the city. More than 60 people were also rescued from under the rubble by the civil protection corps and the fire brigade, the government said.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said the government will hold an emergency meeting to examine how victims can quickly get help from Equatorial Guinea before international aid arrives. Investigations into the explosion have begun, he said in a Tuesday statement.
The president initially said the explosion was due to “careless handling of dynamite” in the military barracks and the impact damaged almost all homes and buildings in Bata.
The vice president, who is also in charge of defense and security, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, said on Tuesday that investigations so far showed that the fire may have started when a farmer set fire to his plot to prepare it for food production and a breeze spreads flames to nearby barracks. where the high-caliber ammunition was stored. Pictures shown on state television showed smoke rising above the blast site as the crowds fled. Roofs of houses were torn off.
Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich West African country of 1.3 million people south of Cameroon, was a colony in Spain until it became independent in 1968. Bata has about 175,000 inhabitants.
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