KAMPALA, Uganda – Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers fanned out across devastated neighborhoods in Equatorial Guinea’s largest city on Monday, looking for survivors a day after a series of massive explosions erupted in the Central African nation.
Television footage showed pickup trucks, taxis, vans and ambulances crisscrossing the port city of Bata, with people injured in Sunday’s explosions. The explosions were caused by improperly stored dynamite in a military base near the Atlantic coast, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo said on Sunday.
According to state media, the clinics ran out of beds on Monday. The country’s Ministry of Health said the number of confirmed deaths had risen to 98, with more than 600 hospitalizations. Officials said they expect the death toll to rise.
The explosion has drawn comparisons to Lebanon’s massive explosion at Beirut Port in August, which killed 210 people and caused approximately $ 15 billion in property damage, and the 2002 explosion at a gun dump in Lagos, Nigeria, killing more than 1,000. people perished.
The Equatorial Guinea disaster is a major test for Mr. Obiang, the world’s longest-serving president. On Monday, the main opposition party accused him of mishandling the crisis, which it said revealed the poor state of health care in the oil-rich country. The tiny country of 1.5 million people, which is home to Africa’s third largest oil reserves, has been plagued by years of widespread corruption under Mr. Obiang, who has been in power since 1979, when Jimmy Carter was US president.
Revenues from oil – and its small population – have propelled the nation to be among the countries with the highest per capita income on the continent, although economists and rights groups have long argued that the majority of residents live under $ 2 a day to get by. Human Rights Watch said mismanagement and corruption left the country unprepared for last year’s oil price crash.
“Seeing injured people in taxis and vans, without ambulances, is a sufficient indication that Equatorial Guinea is in very bad hands,” said the main opposition party, Convergence for Social Democracy. “There is no government.”
The Equatorial Guinea Department of Health said the government had sent a team of psychiatrists to help those suffering from trauma following the explosions, which started Sunday afternoon and continued late into the night. The government did not address the opposition’s concerns about providing shelter for the large number of people whose homes were being destroyed.
In 2019, the country reached out to the International Monetary Fund for a $ 280 million rescue loan, drawing criticism from rights groups that the country is too rich to earn the loan. Equatorial Guinea has a per capita income of more than $ 10,000, which is higher than countries like Brazil and China, according to the World Bank.
Authorities in Switzerland, the US, South Africa and France have investigated Mr. Obiang for corruption, alleging that the president and close allies have transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds, in a country where about half a million people remain. live. poverty. In 2019, Swiss authorities seized and auctioned about 25 supercars owned by Teodorin Obiang Nguema, the son of President Obiang, defense minister and heir to the throne.
Mr. Obiang is increasingly pressured by international rights groups and donors to stamp out corruption, with little success. His army, made up of about 1,500 soldiers, is poorly trained and ill-equipped, and Mr. Obiang has resorted to foreign forces to bolster his personal security.
Over the past three years, Uganda has maintained about 300 troops in Equatorial Guinea to secure Mr. Obiang and the country’s vital facilities. The Obiang family also employs Israeli guards, who walked with the president’s son as he surveyed the wreckage on Sunday.
Write to Nicholas Bariyo at [email protected]
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