The death toll from a fire and explosion at a weapons depot near the capital's airport is at least 83 and is likely to rise further as more bodies are recovered from the charred remains of houses, the health minister said on Friday.

 

Ivo Garrido said that at least 300 people were injured, many of them children.

 

Garrido said the casualties included military personnel working on the site and civilians living in nearby houses in a poor, densely populated neighborhood.

 

President Armando Guebuza toured the stricken area, visited victims in hospital and appealed to the nation which has been battered by floods and a cyclone in the past two months to be calm.

 

"We mourn what is happening," said Guebuza, who canceled a planned visit to South Africa and summoned an emergency Cabinet meeting.

 

The defense ministry said high temperatures that have gripped Maputo, the capital, in recent months were the most likely cause of Thursday's explosion. The temperature Thursday was 35 C. The searing heat was blamed for a smaller explosion at the depot in January when three people were injured.

 

The Interior Ministry ordered police and firefighters to help the military in destroying all remaining ammunition at the depot, which was stocked with obsolete Soviet-made weapons used during Mozambique's long civil war.

 

The ministry also ordered police reinforcements to stop looters from ransacking houses abandoned by their owners because of the inferno.

 

Maputo airport, which was closed late on Thursday, was reopened just after midday Friday. But the city struggled to return to normality and the area around the ammunition depot remained out of bounds.

 

Television showed images of bodies buried in the rubble of destroyed houses and of heavily bandaged victims at Maputo's main hospital.

 

Hundreds of people milled around the hospital, waiting for news of loved ones. Authorities said many children had been separated from their parents in the chaos and panic that engulfed the port city at the height of the explosions.

 

At the height of the inferno, some city center windows were shattered by the intense heat. Buildings also shook with the impact of the explosions. Rockets detonated by the fire rained down on residential areas.

 

Radio stations were flooded with callers complaining that the ammunition depot was situated near residential areas.

 

Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony still recovering from a long civil war, has been battered by natural disasters this year. Aid agencies have credited Mozambique's good emergency response system with limiting the casualties.

 

Heavy rains have inundated much of the country since January, causing flooding and prompting tens of thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes. A cyclone hit coastal resorts last month, killing 12 people and battering the nation's fledgling tourist industry. And earlier this week, more homes on the coast were evacuated and sea defense breached by exceptionally high tides.

 

The southern part of Mozambique, which includes Maputo, is in the grip of a fierce drought and blistering heat wave.

 

(China Daily March 24, 2007)