President visits site of Bata barracks explosions

Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema was seen visiting the scene of a series of explosions at a military barracks in the coastal city of Bata on Tuesday, as the death toll rose to 98 after more bodies were recovered according to authorities.

The blasts on Sunday also wounded at least 615 people, authorities said.

The government said that 316 of the injured have been discharged and 299 remain in care in various hospitals in the city.

More than 60 people were also rescued from under the rubble by the civil protection corps and fire service, the government said.

Investigations into the blast have begun, Obiang Nguema said in a Tuesday statement.

The president initially said the explosion was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks and the impact damaged almost all the homes and buildings in Bata.

The vice president, who is also charged with defense and security, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, said Tuesday that investigations so far showed the fire may have begun when a farmer set fire to his plot to prepare it for food production and a breeze spread the flames to the nearby barracks where the high-caliber ammunition was stored.

Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich West African country of 1.3 million people located south of Cameroon, was a colony of Spain until it gained its independence in 1968. Bata has roughly 175,000 inhabitants.