Israel Dispatching aid to Equatorial Guinea in wake of Massive Explosion

Jerusalem, 10 March, 2021 (TPS) -- Israel’s Ministry of Health and the IDF are dispatching a medical delegation to Equatorial Guinea after a massive explosion at a military base in the Central African country that killed over 100 people and injured hundreds of others.

At the request of the National Security Council (NSC), the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with the IDF, is sending a medical delegation to treat the victims of the disaster in Equatorial Guinea, the Ministry of Health announced Wednesday.

The delegation includes intensive care physicians, pediatricians and specialists from a variety of medical fields, and nurses and paramedics from hospitals throughout Israel.

The explosion in the port city of Bata on Sunday over 100 people and injured at least another 615.

President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo said in a statement that “Bata was the location of an accident caused by the negligence and carelessness of a unit charged with the care and protection of the stores of dynamite and explosives next to the ammunition at the Nkoantoma Military Base, which caught fire from the burning of nearby land by neighbors, causing an explosion in the dynamite and explosives store and subsequently the ammunition.”

Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa’s smallest countries, with some 850,000 residents, and Bata is one of the country’s two cities.

Israel regularly dispatches rescue delegations and aid to countries that have experienced disasters of various kinds.