Morticians stacked bodies two to a tray at Brazzaville’s main morgue as state radio reported at least 246 people had died from two days of explosions at an armory that catapulted shells, rockets and other munitions into a densely populated area of the capital of the Republic of the Congo.
Police said on Tuesday that international firefighters had brought the main blaze under control by Tuesday morning and prevented it from spreading to a second munitions depot just 100m away.
The second depot contains even heavier-caliber weapons, including “Stalin’s Organ” multiple rocket launchers, a military source said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Photo: AFP
It was still unclear whether rescue efforts could start in earnest, nearly three days after the first blasts. The military source said there were plans for the controlled destruction of the munitions in the second depot, which will likely delay any attempts to dig into the rubble to find possible survivors or bodies.
There are fears that undetonated munitions have been catapulted kilometers away by the blasts, and that the many small fires ignited could suck away oxygen needed by any entombed survivors.
The government announced a period of national mourning to be observed from Tuesday until victims are buried, at an unknown date.
At the morgue of the city’s main Central University Hospital, funeral services director Ferdinand Malembo Milandou said on national television that they had run out of space.
“We’ve been forced to place two bodies in each rack,” he said from the morgue that has the capacity to hold 126 corpses.
National radio reported that the main morgue was holding 246 bodies.
That did not appear to include 70 bodies at the morgue of the capital’s military hospital, reported to The Associated Press (AP) on Sunday by a doctor who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Adding those corpses to state radio’s toll citing the director of the main hospital mortuary would bring the number of dead to more than 300.
Malembo Milandou said that more wounded were still being brought in on Tuesday and that some were dying in hospitals. Many more corpses are likely to be found when rescue workers can dig into debris.
State TV broadcast on Tuesday morning the first images from the off-limits disaster zone. A survey by AP showed all buildings within a 2km radius of the military camp of a tank regiment were completely flattened, including three schools and two churches where scores were attending Sunday services.
National TV also showed images of earth-moving equipment removing rubble and several ambulances being filled with newly discovered corpses.
“It’s like a tsunami without water,” Congolese Security Minister Raymond Zephirin Mboulou said on TV, as he conducted an inspection with other Cabinet members.
Congo’s director-general of health Elira Dokekias said the capital’s hospitals were treating 1,340 injured people and that 60 were awaiting urgent surgeries.
Medical teams from former colonizer France, Italy, Morocco, Sao Tome and Principe and neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo arrived on Monday and Tuesday to help, Dokekias said.
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