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LAGOS, Jan 28: More than 600 bodies of drowned people were retrieved from canals in Lagos on Monday after bomb explosions from a burning military arms depot triggered panic in Nigeria’s biggest city, witnesses and officials said.
“I have counted more than 60 bodies here. Ambulances and families have taken away more than 200 from this canal alone,” a witness said at the Oke-Afa canal near the devastated Ikeja military barracks.
Soldiers and other rescue workers brought out between 200 and 300 bodies from the adjoining Pako canal, local residents who helped in the rescue operation told Reuters.
“Many people have reported missing children, and there are children looking for their parents,” Lagos Police Commissioner Mike Okiro said.
More than 700 children in one district alone were reported separated from their parents after the worst disaster in the city of 10 million since deadly political riots there in 1993.
The AIT television network in Lagos showed pictures of piles of bodies, mostly women and children, surrounded by large crowds of onlookers.
SERIES OF EXPLOSIONS: Witnesses reported extensive damage inside the barracks and to nearby homes and public buildings after the series of huge explosions on Sunday.
“A whole section of the barracks is destroyed and some buildings are still smouldering,” one said. “Hundreds of shells of all types are on the ground everywhere. Some have not exploded.”
President Olusegun Obasanjo visited the barracks and pledged urgent relief assistance and a military inquiry.
“We have directed the police to create a particular location to ensure that missing children can be located by their parents,” he told hundreds of angry mothers.
The blasts and the unfolding tragedy have added to the problems Obasanjo’s government which is struggling with Nigeria’s worst cycle of political and religious violence for over three decades.
Angry callers denounced the government on talk shows, accusing it of poor management of the crisis and of ignoring calls to relocate the armoury from a crowded district.
Neither the army nor the police had issued any official casualty bulletin more than 24 hours after explosions began. Many Lagos residents complained security forces were nowhere in sight to help people during the mayhem.
A Reuters reporter saw two bodies on Oshodi Road near the still smouldering arms depot. Eight more were counted by other witnesses.
“The two in Oshodi were electrocuted after an overhead electric cable fell over them as they ran during the confusion,” a resident of the area said.
FAMILIES WITHOUT SHELTER: Hundreds of soldiers and their families spent the night in the open and milled in front of the main barracks gate on Monday morning, unsure whether to go back in. Some salvaged belongings from wrecked homes.
“I have reports from the field that many people in the Ikeja area have taken refuge at police stations,” Okiro said.
The army moved quickly on Sunday to assure the public the blasts were not evidence of a new military coup.
“It is an accident and there is no political undertone to it,” said Brigadier-General George Emdin, commander of the Ikeja brigade, apologising on behalf of the army for the explosions and the panic they triggered.
He said the army had been planning for years to improve storage facilities at the crumbling armoury, located about six km (3.5 miles) from the city’s international airport terminal.
There were no reports on Monday of flight disruptions.
Military sources said the exploding ordinance at the barracks, home to Nigeria’s T-55 and Leopard tanks, would have included cluster bombs.
The Ikeja base has played leading roles in Nigeria’s several military coups since independence from Britain in 1960.—Reuters
