State TV images of drones showed block after block of public housing in the coastal city, either completely destroyed or close to it, the remains of their roofs and walls scattered along the dirt roads of the neighborhood.
“There are many children without parents,” said a teacher in Bata, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the authorities in the tightly controlled Central African country. “What are we doing in the long (term) with those children?”
The withdrawn government accused the explosions of fires caused by farmers living near the military base and the negligent handling of dynamite supplies by the military unit guarding them.
It has declared three days of national mourning as of Wednesday, declared Bata a disaster area, unblocked 10 billion ($ 18.19 million) CFA francs for the response, and appealed for international assistance.
Firefighters continued to comb the rubble looking for bodies on Wednesday as onlookers wept, state television showed. The authorities called for donations of blood and basic goods.
A five-year-old girl was taken from the rubble of a house in the military camp where the explosion took place on Wednesday, Equato-Guinean media AhoraEG said.
Officials have been forced to turn to refrigerated containers to store bodies, said the teacher and Alfredo Okenve, a human rights activist living in exile in Europe.
Okenve said his information indicated the death toll was between 150 and 200, significantly higher than the government’s official toll of 105.
Virgilio Seriche, an official at the Ministry of Information, denied that bodies were being stored in containers, and authorities provided current information on the number of confirmed deaths.
“The reliable data is what the government is publishing on this incident, not what comes from other sources,” he told Reuters.
Traumatized residents
Residents of Bata have been traumatized by the explosions, which lasted for hours on Sunday, and are afraid of additional explosions.
The first explosion “was so big that all of us and those around us shouted, ‘This is a bomb, this is a bomb!'” Said the teacher.
“People were crying, screaming, running, trying to stay somewhere, but it was panic. We started seeing police cars and firefighters and people bleeding. It was awful.”
The Health Ministry said in a tweet that it is deploying psychiatrists and psychologists.
The United Nations said Wednesday that the World Health Organization and children’s agency had mobilized UNICEF teams to fight infections and provide logistical support. Spain has sent a first batch of emergency aid.
It is the Central African country’s worst tragedy in recent history, and while the government, charities and individuals have provisionally fed and sheltered everyone, most of Equatorial Guinea’s 1.4 million people live in poverty.
The country is also suffering a double economic shock from the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in the price of crude oil, which provides about three-quarters of state revenues.
The state media has covered wall to wall on the disaster, including calls about the lost children, a rarity in a country considered by human rights activists to be one of Africa’s most repressive and where bad news is often repressed.
Okenve said the scale of the tragedy had left the government no choice.
“If information comes out, it is because it is impossible to verify,” he said.