At least 20 killed in Tanzania arms depot blasts

DAR ES SALAAM: A series of blasts levelled several arms depots at a Tanzanian military base, killing at least 20 people and leaving thousands of people homeless, an administrative official said Thursday.

The explosions showered large parts of Dar es Salaam, the country's largest city, with debris and shrapnel, causing a panic among the population and bringing back memories of the 1998 bombing of the US embassy.

"At the moment the death toll has reached 20," said Said Meck Sadiq, the acting chief administrator of the Dar es Salaam region.

Earlier, Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said the blasts, which went off inside the Gongo la Mboto army base on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam late Wednesday, killed at least 17 people and wounded some 145 others.

Pinda said he had convened an emergency security meeting over the blasts and added that the country's armed forces were investigating the incident.

The premier, who said the death toll could rise in the coming hours, added that some 4,000 people residing in the army base's vicinity fled their homes and had found shelter in a large stadium.

The blasts started going off on Wednesday at around 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) in one ammunition depot and quickly spread to other arms depots in the same military base.

Two nearby residential houses and a secondary school were destroyed by the explosions, the prime minister said.

A KLM flight carrying 300 passengers to Dar es Salaam was diverted to land at Kilimanjaro airport in northern Tanzania for security reasons, state media reported.

There was no indication of foul play in the Wednesday night explosions, and such incidents have happened before in Tanzania.

President Jakaya Kikwete visited the scene of the blast and appealed for calm, saying the situation was under control

In April 2009, 26 people were killed and hundreds wounded by a string of powerful blasts at an arms depot in Dar es Salaam, which officials said were accidental.

The 2009 blasts in the Mbagala district, located around 13 kilometres (eight miles) from the city centre, set off rockets, artillery and mortar shells, and displaced thousands of people.

According to a US State Department briefing released in the aftermath of the 2009 disaster, the frequency of such incidents in arms depots across the world is increasing.

"Poorly maintained, improperly stored, or inadequately guarded conventional weapons and munitions pose as significant a humanitarian challenge as the well-known threat of landmines and other explosive remnants of war left uncleared from past conflicts," it said.

"The frequency of such incidents has increased as urban populations have expanded outward from city centers to the vicinity of what were often previously isolated depots," it explained.

The State Department estimated that such incidents resulted in more than 4,700 fatalities and nearly 5,700 injuries between 1995 and 2009.