At least 15 dead after Equatorial Guinea blasts

OUAGADOUGOU,

FASO

A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 400 others on Sunday, authorities said.

State television TVGE read out a statement from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema which said the explosion was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata. He said that the explosion occurred at 4 p.m. local time.

BURKINA

“The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata,” the president said in the statement, which was in Spanish.

Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African country of 1.3 million people located south of Cameroon, was a colony of Spain until it gained its independence in 1968.

Health officials said that they believed there were people missing in buildings damaged by the blast.

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.

The blasts were a shock for the oil rich Central African nation. Foreign Minister Simeon 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.

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