Brazzaville arms dump explosions leave hundreds dead The Brazzaville explosions were felt in neighbouring DR Congo Link to this video At least 200 people have been killed in an arms dump explosion in Congo-Brazzaville. The explosions ripped apart a nearby neighbourhood in the capital, medical and local authorities said. About 200 people were also injured in the explosions, which rocked Brazzaville at about 8am (7am British time), flattening houses near the scene and sending a plume of smoke high above the city. They had been hit by a shell," one witness said as he left the area. A nearby church packed with worshippers collapsed, another witness said. Bodies were carried into the main city hospital morgue, where officials there said they had counted 136 by mid-afternoon. There are still many more bodies at the scene, one soldier said. Weeping relatives of the dead gathered outside the hospital to mourn while others came to look for family members who had scattered in the chaos. A spokesman at the president's office, Betu Bangana, said: "According to sources at the central hospital we're talking of around 200 dead and many injured. Some people are still [trapped] in their houses ... They're saying the entire neighbourhood of Mpila has been destroyed. Panic spread from Brazzaville across the Congo river to Kinshasa, where windows were shattered by the blasts. Both governments called for calm, and Congo-Brazzaville's defence minister, Charles Zacharie Bowao, quickly dismissed any talk of a coup attempt or mutiny. He told state radio the explosions were the result of a fire at an arms depot at the Regiment Blinde base near the city centre. Residents immediately fled Mpila, normally a densely packed neighbourhood, as a series of smaller explosions rang out, a witness said. A plume of grey smoke still hung over the city hours later as a military helicopter circled the area. The base and surrounding neighbourhood resembled a war zone, with many buildings levelled, burned or badly damaged and the occasional flame still flickered in the debris. "I heard at least five or six good-sized explosions, which blew out the windows and brought down half the ceiling in our hotel," Patrick Mair, an analyst with Control Risks, told Reuters. China's Xinhua news agency cited Chinese officials as saying three Chinese construction workers had been killed and dozens injured, some seriously. They were part of a group of around 140 Chinese workers from the Beijing Construction Engineering Group. Television images showed panic-stricken residents on nearby streets as the injured were rushed to hospital or received first aid on the spot. At least 225 people were being treated at the main university hospital, a source there said. The oil-producing country has suffered coups and a civil war since independence from France in 1960. However, it has remained largely peaceful since President Denis Sassou-Nguesso took power in a coup in 1997. Bangana said Sassou-Nguesso had not been injured by the explosions.