More than 1,100 people remained missing after deadly blasts at a Lagos armoury, but many children among them may be alive and held for unknown reasons by security officials, the Nigerian Red Cross said today.
More than 600 people were known to have died following the explosions and fire at the army weapons dump last Sunday in a crowded district of Lagos.
Many of the dead, including hundreds of children, drowned in two canals near the armoury as smoke billowed and rockets rained down on stampeding crowds fleeing the disaster.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has faced fierce criticism over the location of the armoury in a crowded district and over government handling of the tragedy, ordered a review of arms storage by the military.
Witnesses had reported over 1,000 children at the Oduduwa police station in Ikeja on Sunday night but Red Cross workers who arrived the next morning were told they had gone.
The independent Vanguard newspaper reported today that 172 people, mostly women and children, who sheltered in a Roman Catholic church on Sunday night had been forcibly removed by armed soldiers on Monday.
It published the names, and in some cases, addresses of the 172 as compiled by parish priest Father Roderick Crawley, whom the Vanguard said sheltered them.
Fr Crawley could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for the Catholic Secretariat said he only knew that some children took refuge at the church on Sunday.