BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo —Homes and buildings collapsed in the Congolese capital after an arms depot exploded 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 3-mile radius surrounding the barracks storing the munitions, including across the river that separates Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, from Kinshasa, the capital of the larger Central African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Government spokesman Bienvenu Okyemi blamed a short-circuit for the fire that set off the successive blasts.
“It’s like a tsunami passed through here,” said Christine Ibata, a student. “The roofs of houses were blown off.”
The register of a morgue in Brazzaville already had 136 bodies 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.
President Denis Sassou-Nguesso toured two hospitals and a morgue as injured people were being brought in, including a 4-year-old boy who had lost his leg.
In a statement read on state TV, 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.”
It’s unclear what started the fire at the barracks in a populated neighborhood of the capital, 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 8 a.m., and several smaller blasts were heard throughout the morning. Another major explosion went off at about 1 p.m.
Residents woke up thinking that either an earthquake had hit or a coup was underway in this nation that suffered through a 1997 civil war. Defense Minister Charles Zacharie Boawo appeared on national TV to urge calm in Brazzaville and in the neighboring capital, Kinshasa.
France, the former colonial power, is sending a shipment of emergency aid to Brazzaville after the explosions, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement Sunday.
