Blast in Congo arms dump kills more than 200

More than 200 people were killed yesterday when an arms dump exploded in Brazzaville, ripping apart a nearby neighbourhood in the Congo Republic’s capital, medical and local authorities said.

Around 200 more were injured by the blasts which rocked the riverside capital at around 8am local time, flattening houses and sending a plume of smoke high above the city.

“I saw someone being carried to hospital with their intestines hanging out. They had been hit by a shell,” one witness told Reuters as he was leaving the blast zone.

A nearby church, packed with worshippers, collapsed, said one witness.

Corpses, many burned or missing body parts, were carried into the main city hospital morgue, said a Reuters reporter outside the building. Officials there said they had counted 136 bodies by mid-afternoon.

Many more corpses littered the scene, said one soldier. Weeping relatives of the dead gathered outside the hospital to mourn while others came to look for family members who had scattered in the chaos.

An adviser in the president’s office, Betu Bangana, said: “According to sources at the central hospital we’re talking of around 200 dead and many injured.

“Some people are still [trapped] in their houses... They’re saying the entire neighbourhood of Mpila has been destroyed.”

Panic spread to Kinshasa, 4km across the Congo River, which separates the former French colony of Congo Republic from the larger Democratic Republic of Congo. The blast was so strong it shattered windows in the neighbouring city.

Both governments called for calm.

Congo Republic defence minister, Charles Zacharie Bowao, dismissed any talk of a coup attempt or mutiny, and told state radio the explosions were the result of a fire in the arms depot.