Hundreds of bodies in Nigeria canal

LAGOS, Nigeria — As onlookers wept and wailed, hundreds of bodies were pulled out of a canal in Nigeria's largest city Monday after they drowned while trying to flee explosions at an army weapons depot. \nMany victims apparently didn't realize how deep the water was and drowned when they ran and drove vehicles into the Oke Afa drainage canal in Lagos, witnesses said. They were fleeing explosions at the city's Ikeja military base, which propelled shrapnel and shock waves for miles Sunday night. \nRescue volunteer Ben Nwachukwu said more than 200 bodies were pulled from just one part of the canal. Other volunteers said the death toll could be much higher, but getting an accurate count was difficult — in part because the current was carrying bodies downstream. Authorities issued no official death count. \nAn Associated Press reporter saw at least 35 corpses in the water, on the grass and in the backs of trucks being driven away. \nMany children were separated from their families during Sunday night's panic, said Lagos State Police Commissioner Mike Okiro. He said some children were being cared for at police stations until their families could be located. \nArmy spokesman Col. Felix Chukwumah said the explosions began when a fire spread to the depot, which is surrounded by crowded slums and working-class neighborhoods. He did not know how the fire started, but a police officer said Sunday it began at a nearby gas station. \nState and military officials said the fire was accidental and not an indication of military unrest. \nDozens of blasts sent fireballs towering over this city of 12 million and shattered windows six miles away at the international airport. The explosions continued into the early morning Monday. \nRescue workers and volunteers in canoes used long poles to search for corpses in the canal in the northern neighborhood of Isolo, five miles from the weapons depot. Onlookers cried and wailed each time they found a body. \nNwachukwu, a 38-year-old businessman who volunteered in the search effort, said he pulled a flailing woman and several children from the water late Sunday night. But by dawn Monday, he said he was only finding bodies. \n"The people who fell in here are strangers to the area," Nwachukwu said. "They didn't know there was water until they were drowning." \nParts of the canal were blanketed with water hyacinths. A woman's pink shoe, a baby's slipper and a bright orange and red skirt floated among the plants. \nResidents searching for missing loved ones filed nervously past rows of wet garments laid out by rescuers on the grass. \nIt was not immediately clear how many people died in the blasts themselves. Army Brig. Gen. George Emdin said there was "absolutely no one killed." But Mustafa Igama, a soldier at the base, described seeing "so many dead bodies" as he fled the scene. \nAn Associated Press reporter saw the body of a young man on a street outside the base Monday. The city's respected Guardian newspaper reported that 12 bodies and numerous wounded were carried from the base Sunday night. \nPresident Olusegun Obasanjo toured the base on Monday, addressing hundreds of soldiers and their families who had fled the barracks. He promised the military would investigate the cause of the explosions. \nMembers of the crowd chanted, "President, go inside!" and pointed angrily at the munitions dump, where flames and cracking noises could still be seen and heard. \nObasanjo, who climbed onto the hood of a car to address the crowd, promised to "organize displaced people, relocate people and reunite children with their families." \nA small blast interrupted Obasanjo's speech, jolting jittery crowd members, but the president was unfazed. \nOlusegun Ajayi, an officer at the base, said his home was destroyed and his three small children were missing. \n"My wife and I don't know where they are," he said in tears. \nAs he spoke, flames were still licking the walls of a school inside the base. \nBurning shrapnel from the blasts also lit fires that caved in the roof of the Divine Power Outreach Ministries Church on the top floor of a four-story building in the nearby working-class neighborhood of Oshodi. \nNearby, an artillery shell destroyed a radio and television repair shop and embedded fragments in the ground. \n"I was so afraid, I ran away without being able to save even a pocket radio," said Sani Mohammed, the shop's owner. \nNext door, the windows of the Mandela hospital were destroyed and tiles were knocked off the ceiling. All of the patients were safely evacuated, hospital staff said. \nLagos is the biggest city in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. The election of Obasanjo in 1999 ended 15 years of brutal military rule, but widespread poverty and ethnic divisions continue to plague the country.