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| Sunday, 3 February 2002 |
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Death toll from Nigerian blast passes 1,000 LAGOS, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The death toll from a Nigerian munitions dump blast has risen above 1,000, after more bodies were pulled from canals where people drowned or were trampled to death in a stampede, the governor of Lagos said on Saturday. Nigeria suffered its worst disaster in years last Sunday when an armoury exploded at a military barracks in the city of 10 million. Most of the dead were killed in a rush to escape showers of shrapnel that ended in filthy drainage canals. Rescue workers continued to find bodies trapped in the tangled weeds on Friday. "We have almost completed the search for the bodies in the swamp," Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu told Reuters. "More than 1,000 in total have been registered as dead." Thousands more, most of them soldiers and their families, have been made homeless. An official inquiry has begun into the cause of the blast, which sent rockets, bombs and shells flying into heavily populated districts of Africa's biggest city, panicking residents who thought it was a military coup. A group of human rights lawyers said on Friday they suspected political sabotage might have been the cause, rather than an accidental fire which soldiers at first suggested had set off the blast. President Olusegun Obasanjo faces charges of insensitivity and anger from soldiers after the disaster at the barracks. Past eruptions of military tempers have had disastrous consequences for Africa's most populous nation, which suffered years of coups and decline under corrupt army regimes that allowed civilian rule to return only in 1999. Bomb disposal experts began detonating unexploded munitions on Friday, setting off thunderous booms that sent a new shiver of fear through the city. |
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