NIGERIA: More than 600 people have been confirmed dead, their bodies recovered from a canal complex in Lagos, after people fled an arms dump explosion, state-run Radio Nigeria said yesterday.
"More than 600 people have been confirmed dead by our reporters," the station said.
Hundreds of people, mostly children, were pulled dead from the canal after fleeing an exploding weapons dump that shook the city on Sunday night. Anger has turned on the military.
"This is my baby. This is my baby," wept one 38-year-old man as he held the slender body of his four-year-old daughter, her coffee-coloured skin dripping with water, as she was pulled from the deadly waters.
The Governor of Lagos State, Mr Bola Tinubu, blamed the military for the accident at the poorly maintained armoury.
"It is very tragic. It is a national disaster," Mr Tinubu said as he visited the site of the drowning. "It was not caused by any government but by the military," he said.
Mr Edwin Ojila, owner of a bar destroyed by a shell, said: "The army. They ruin this country for so many years and now they destroy our city. They are too much. No one can ever want them again."
The final toll of the tragedy - caused by panic at the series of explosions that rocked Lagos late on Sunday - was not clear last night.
Hospital sources, officials and witnesses put the toll at well over 580, and an official spokesman said more than 200 bodies had been recovered by government agencies alone.
More bodies will have been recovered by individuals and taken off either straight to hospitals or for immediate burial, without notifying the authorities, the Lagos State Information Commissioner, Mr Dele Alake, said.
One man, a local printer, Mr Shola Odun, said at the canal: "I have counted more than 580 ... I am looking for my children. I have been here since the morning."
A nurse at the Isolo General Hospital said 152 bodies had been brought there and that more bodies had been taken to the Ikeja General Hospital and Lagos Island General Hospital, both of which had larger mortuaries, she said.
Staff at those hospitals confirmed receiving "large numbers" of bodies but declined to give a precise figure.
Ordnance rained down all over the city late on Sunday. Fireballs flared into the night sky, rockets detonated and a nearby petrol dump exploded. Panic set in and hundreds of thousands fled.
In Isolo, the flight itself was the cause of the tragedy. The district lies between the army barracks in Ikeja and the airport but is bisected by a vast canal.
Appearing on television late Sunday to declare that the explosions did not signal the country's seventh military coup, the Ikeja garrison's commanding officer, Brig-Gen George Emdin, apologised to Lagosians. "On behalf of the military we are sorry," he said.
"This is an old ammunition depot with high-calibre bombs ... some efforts were being made in the recent past to try to improve the storage facility. But this accident happened before the high authorities could do what was needed," he explained.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a former soldier and military ruler, visited the site of the explosion early yesterday and ordered an immediate inquiry.
Entering the main army barracks in Lagos Ikeja district, President Obasanjo told reporters he was shocked by what he had seen.
He said a first task for the military was to locate soldiers' children who had been lost in the pandemonium.
The Nigerian military had been warned about the weapons dump after an earlier blast, members of the Army Wives' Association said yesterday.
"We told them before. There was a small explosion last year and we told them about it," said Victoria, a member of the association who declined to give her family name for fear of repercussions for her husband, a serving army sergeant.
"The army wives had been complaining that it was dangerous, but they did not do anything. They did not care," she said."It is unbelievable.
We are under attack in our own city, and it is the army that is doing it," stormed Mr Afe Adebiopon, himself a former soldier.