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At least 20 dead and 600 injured left four accidental explosions of weapons and ammunition depots this Sunday from a military camp in Equatorial Guinea, literally razing several residential neighborhoods.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has led this small Central African country for almost 42 years, accused farmers of letting the spread of agricultural burning and of “Negligence” to the military in charge of guarding the arsenal.
In an impressive radius around this military camp in Bata, the economic capital, several houses and buildings were destroyed and the streets were littered with huge rubble for hundreds of meters, according to images from public television TVGE.
Many children, women, men and the elderly fled – sometimes aided by others or limping – from a bleak landscape, shrouded in thick clouds of smoke and dust after at least four terrifying explosions.
In a hospital in Bata, many injured, some on the ground and with serum, received first aid in a chaotic environment, according to TVGE images.
“Negligence”
“The city of Bata was the victim of an accident caused by the negligence of the unit in charge of guarding the dynamite, explosives and ammunition deposits of the Nkoa Ntoma military camp, that caught fire as a result of the burning caused in the fields by the farmers that finally made these deposits explode successively “, he explained. Obiang Nguema, who at 78 is the living president who has been in power the longest.
Nguema spoke of 17 dead and 500 injured but the Defense Ministry updated the balance: at least 20 dead and 600 wounded.
According to a statement from that ministry, “the explosions (…) of large-caliber ammunition” caused “shock waves that completely destroyed many nearby houses.”
The city of Bata is home to around 800,000 of the roughly 1.4 million inhabitants of this small country rich in oil and gas, but where the majority of the population is poor.
The military camp in the Nkoa Ntoma neighborhood houses members of the special forces and the gendarmerie.
According to a tweet from the Ministry of Health, many inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhoods must be under the rubble of their houses or buildings. TVGE showed images of civilians and firefighters extracting children and adults from piles of concrete and scrap metal.
Help
The head of state ordered an investigation and “called on the international community to support Equatorial Guinea in these even more difficult times due to the conjunction of the economic crisis due to the fall in oil prices and the covid-19 pandemic. 19 “.
For hours it was difficult, if not impossible, to communicate by phone between the port of Bata and the capital, Malabo, which is located on the island of Bioko.
Images showed the vice president in charge of Defense and Security, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, nicknamed Teodorin, the president’s son and considered his dolphin, walking through the rubble with a handful of his usual Israeli bodyguards.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the most secretive countries on the African continent. Opponents and international organizations accuse the Teodoro Obiang Nguema regime of committing human rights abuses.
Malabo claims to have thwarted an attempted coup in December 2017 for which the courts sentenced, on June 1, 2019, 130 people to between 3 and 96 years in prison, half in absentia.
The authorities accuse a group of foreign mercenaries of having wanted to attack, on December 24, 2017, the head of state who was in one of his palaces near the borders that the country shares with Gabon and Cameroon. On the 27th, the Cameroonian police detained around thirty armed men at the border. Malabo accused them of being the leaders of the coup attempt.
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