212
A total of 615 people were wounded in Sunday’s blast at the Nkoa Ntoma camp.
 |
| Volunteers searched the rubble for bodies on Monday |
Equatorial Guinea on Friday held a funeral ceremony for those who perished in the explosions at a military camp at the country’s economic hub of Bata on March 7th.
The official death toll has been pegged at 105. Although Human Rights Watch reports that ”far more” lives were lost.
A total of 615 people were wounded in Sunday’s blast at the Nkoa Ntoma camp.
The blast destroyed buildings and houses in surrounding districts.
On Monday, the State broadcaster said more than 60 survivors had been trapped under debris, including two children aged three and four.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo blamed the military for ”negligence” in stocking ammunition so close to residential areas.
Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into the disaster.
TVGE has shown images akin to a war zone, with rescue workers and civilians struggling to remove bodies from smoking ruins.
Obiang on Tuesday said the officers in charge of the camp, which houses special forces and gendarmes and their families, had “been careless”.
Dynamite is normally “stocked very far from people and kept underground”, he said.
The defence ministry said blasts caused by heavy-calibre munitions caused “shock waves which totally destroyed numerous homes nearby”.
The only Spanish-speaking country in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea, is one of the most closed-off nations on the continent.
AFP
