President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has confirmed the death toll for the TV channel TVGE. He says the explosions were an accident caused by “negligent storage of explosives, dynamite and ammunition”.
The health authorities in the West African country announced on Twitter on Sunday night that a total of 420 people are being treated at three different hospitals.
Photos shared on social media show large clouds of smoke rolling up from the scene. The telephone lines and the internet are said to have broken down, and patients flocked to the hospitals.
TVGE shows pictures of collapsed buildings and injured people lying on the floor of a hospital.
– We heard the explosion, but we do not know what is going on, says the local resident Teodoro Nguema to the news agency AFP.
The camp houses, among other things, parts of the army’s special forces and paramilitary forces.
Around 800,000 of Equatorial Guinea’s 1.4 million people live in Bata. Most of them live in poverty despite the country’s oil wealth.
Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by 78-year-old Teodoro Obiang Nguema for almost 42 years.
His son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is the vice president in charge of defense and security, inspected the damage after the explosion, according to TV pictures.
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