Equatorial Guinea blasts kill 20 people
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 600 on Sunday, authorities said.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said the explosions at 4 p.m. local time were caused by the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the barracks in the Mondong Nkuantoma neighborhood in Bata.
“The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata,” he said in a statement.
The Defense Ministry released a statement late Sunday saying a fire at a weapons depot in the barracks caused the explosion of high-caliber ammunition. It said the provisional death toll was 20, adding that the cause of the explosions will be fully investigated.
The president said the fire may have been linked to residents burning the fields surrounding the barracks.
State television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the site as crowds fled.
Images from local media 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.
The ministry made a call for blood donors and volunteer health workers. It said its health workers were treating the injured at the site and at three hospitals, but it feared that people were still missing under the rubble.
Equatorial Guinea is an African country of 1.3 million people south of Cameroon. Bata has roughly 175,000 inhabitants. The country was a colony of Spain until gaining its independence in 1968.