Congo blast dead buried
Source: Agencies |
March 12, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SOLDIERS wearing gas masks yesterday loaded more than a hundred coffins onto the beds of semi trucks and solemnly drove them across Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo in mourning a week after a catastrophic explosion obliterated a section of the capital.
Extra carpenters had to be hired to build the coffins in time for yesterday's mass funeral. The municipal morgue stayed open all night on Saturday so that families could finish the ritual washing of the bodies of the 159 people whose identities could be verified.
At least 246 people were killed one week ago when an arms depot inside a military barracks in Brazzaville went up in flames, setting off a lethal rain of grenades, mortars and shells. The detonation flattened churches, schools, homes and businesses, and many of the dead were unrecognizable so they were not included among those buried in the state funeral yesterday.
The trucks drove into an open esplanade in the center of the city. The odor of death seeped through the blond wood of the hand-hewn caskets, and mourners covered their faces with towels. The families sat in a special section under an awning. Many held framed portraits of their loved ones.
Albert Onongo sat in the second row, a picture of his 7-year-old son leaning against the legs of his chair. The child, he said, ran out when the first explosion went off last Sunday, and was hit in the head by shrapnel. Onongo said that he stopped crying a few hours ago, when he went to wash his child's body at the morgue.
"I saw his body, and the tears stopped. I haven't been able to eat or to sleep. For a father to lose a child, it's incomprehensible," said Onongo. "He wanted to do everything just like his Papa. He called me his 'best friend.' Now he is giving me strength to go on."
Overnight, families camped in front of the morgue, waiting for the name of their dead to be called on the outdoor speaker. They held shopping bags with the new clothes bought to dress their loves ones.
Coffins were being hauled out of a shed on a trolley, pushed by four men wearing face masks. When their turn came, families were given gas masks, and ushered into the tiled floor of the morgue. Inside female relatives washed the women's bodies, while male relatives washed the men's.
Extra carpenters had to be hired to build the coffins in time for yesterday's mass funeral. The municipal morgue stayed open all night on Saturday so that families could finish the ritual washing of the bodies of the 159 people whose identities could be verified.
At least 246 people were killed one week ago when an arms depot inside a military barracks in Brazzaville went up in flames, setting off a lethal rain of grenades, mortars and shells. The detonation flattened churches, schools, homes and businesses, and many of the dead were unrecognizable so they were not included among those buried in the state funeral yesterday.
The trucks drove into an open esplanade in the center of the city. The odor of death seeped through the blond wood of the hand-hewn caskets, and mourners covered their faces with towels. The families sat in a special section under an awning. Many held framed portraits of their loved ones.
Albert Onongo sat in the second row, a picture of his 7-year-old son leaning against the legs of his chair. The child, he said, ran out when the first explosion went off last Sunday, and was hit in the head by shrapnel. Onongo said that he stopped crying a few hours ago, when he went to wash his child's body at the morgue.
"I saw his body, and the tears stopped. I haven't been able to eat or to sleep. For a father to lose a child, it's incomprehensible," said Onongo. "He wanted to do everything just like his Papa. He called me his 'best friend.' Now he is giving me strength to go on."
Overnight, families camped in front of the morgue, waiting for the name of their dead to be called on the outdoor speaker. They held shopping bags with the new clothes bought to dress their loves ones.
Coffins were being hauled out of a shed on a trolley, pushed by four men wearing face masks. When their turn came, families were given gas masks, and ushered into the tiled floor of the morgue. Inside female relatives washed the women's bodies, while male relatives washed the men's.
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