Poor storage blamed for deadly Maputo blast

An official report into an explosion last month that ripped apart Mozambique’s main armoury and killed 119 people has blamed the tragedy on poor storage conditions, the Presidency said on Thursday.

“The report says the causes of the explosion were the poor storage of stocks of arms and explosives in the armoury and the weather conditions,” a spokesperson in the office of President Armando Guebuza said.

“It points to human error as the main cause of the incident,” Estefanio Muholove added.

Guebuza ordered the report the day after the blast on March 22, close to the country’s main international airport.

Apart from the 119 fatalities, about 500 others were injured when the massive stockpile of weapons and explosives, which included missiles and landmines, suddenly blew up.

Sources taking part in the rescue operation had said the weapons and explosives had been packed into a building with a tin roof and little ventilation as temperatures were in the mid-30s degrees Celsius.

The defence minister confirmed on Wednesday that the armoury will be rebuilt far from inhabited areas after criticism that it had been sited so close to civilians.

Many of the explosives that went off in the blast were left over from the Southern African country’s civil war, which ended in 1992.

The government has also announced that it will spend about $12-million on rebuilding about 1 300 homes that were either fully or partially destroyed by the blast.—Sapa-AFP