Homes and buildings collapsed in the capital of the Republic of the Congo after an arms depot exploded on Sunday, killing at least 206 people and entombing countless others in crushed structures including inside two churches that buckled while parishioners were celebrating Mass, officials and witnesses said.
The shock waves shattered windows in a 5km radius surrounding the barracks storing the munitions, including across the river that separates Brazzaville from Kinshasa, the capital of the larger Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Republic of the Congo government spokesperson Bienvenu Okyemi blamed a short-circuit for the fire that set off the successive blasts.
Photo: AFP
“It’s like a tsunami passed through here,” said Christine Ibata, a student. “The roofs of houses were blown off.”
About 1,500 people were injured, Okyemi said on national radio.
The register of a morgue in Brazzaville already had 136 bodies on Sunday afternoon, as more continued to arrive. A doctor at the capital’s military hospital who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press reported 70 more deaths.
Okyemi put the official toll at 146 dead, at a late-night news conference, but said rescue workers still were looking for corpses.
He said the main fire was under control, though some homes still were burning.
Republic of the Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso toured two hospitals and a morgue as injured people were being brought in, including a four-year-old boy who had lost his leg.
The president was visibly moved and in a statement read on state TV he said: “We have no less than 100 dead, many wounded and significant structural damage.”
The president said that the government was doing it all it could to launch a rescue effort.
“We are trying to organize ourselves. I am asking the population to show courage and solidarity ... all the material and human loss will be evaluated and the government will take a just decision,” Sassou-Nguesso said. “This tragedy is an accident.”
Okyemi said the government has decided to move all barracks outside the capital. There are at least five military camps in Brazzaville.
He also announced a curfew for a perimeter around the affected area, but did not specify the area or the hours.
And he said the government is taking temporary charge of the many children found wandering around alone, apparently separated from their parents in the chaos.
It was unclear what started the fire at the tank regiment’s barracks located in the capital’s densely populated northern neighborhood of Ouenze, but an official at the president’s office said the depot is used to store war-grade weapons, including mortars. The first blast went off at about 8am and several smaller blasts were heard throughout the morning. Another major explosion went off at about 1pm.
Residents woke up thinking that either an earthquake had hit them or else a coup was under way in this nation that suffered through a 1997 civil war.
China’s Xinhua news agency said six Chinese had been killed and another was missing. It said that the victims worked for Beijing Construction Engineering Group, which had about 140 Chinese workers at its construction site when the blasts happened.
Xinhua quoted an official from the Chinese embassy as saying dozens of Chinese workers were injured in the blasts and some were in serious condition.
The dormitory building of Huawei Technologies, China’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment, was badly damaged, Xinhua said.
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