More than 400 were injured and many were missing under the rubble, the ministry said after the massive blasts on Sunday.
Resident Carmen Alebeso said the scenes looked like the explosion of an atomic bomb. Alebeso told CNN she was in her car when the first blast occurred Sunday around 2 p.m. local time.
“It was a very big noise and everyone got out of their cars and we were all shocked. We saw the typical image of an atomic bomb in front of us. It was a confusing and desperate situation, people were screaming and crying,” she said.
All the buildings in the area were completely destroyed, and bodies are still being removed from the rubble on Monday, she added.
Alebeso added that those who need it most cannot get medical help.
“We have three main hospitals and they all collapsed. So many people were injured. It was horrible. People were crying in trying to get treatment. It was a scary situation,” she said.
“We ask for the contribution of blood donors,” the health ministry said on Twitter, calling on volunteer health workers to go to the Bata Regional Hospital.
Health workers and firefighters are said to provide care to victims and transport those with serious injuries to hospitals.
In a statement read out in the local media late Sunday, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo blamed the country’s army for the mismanagement of dynamite and other explosive devices held in its care – which he said led to the explosions. after individuals suspected to be farmers, a fire in a field bordering the military base.
‘Bata was the site of an accident caused by the negligence and indifference of a unit charged with the care and protection of the stores of dynamite and explosives next to the ammunition at the military base Nkoantoma, which caught fire from the “burning of nearby land by neighbors, which caused an explosion in the dynamite and explosives store and then the ammunition,” the statement read.
President Mbasogo has called on the international community to help his country repair public and private infrastructure damaged during the blast – which he said would ‘involve significant economic resources’.
The president said the tragic incident came at a time when Equatorial Guinea is still struggling over the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement later Sunday, the Spanish embassy asked its citizens in Equatorial Guinea to ‘stay home’.
The embassy did not provide further information on the stay-at-home advice. However, it issued emergency numbers to all Spanish citizens in the country.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the smallest countries in Africa, with just over 850,000 inhabitants. Bata is one of the country’s two cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants, the other being the capital Malabo.