Cape Town — More than a dozen people have been killed and hundreds wounded in a series of powerful explosions at a military base in the Equatorial Guinea city of Bata, Al Jazeera is reporting.

The news channel reports that President Teodoro Obiang said in a statement on national television that the blasts on Sunday were caused by negligence of a military unit “in charge of storing explosives, dynamite and ammunition at the Nkoa Ntoma military camp”.

Obiang said the explosives caught fire due to “stubble-burning by farmers in their fields” and that the blasts caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata.

The defence ministry said at least 20 people were killed and some 600 people injured, Al Jazeera reports.

The Guardian reports from London that state television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the site of the blast, as crowds fled.

Bata is the country's largest city, with around 800,000 of the nation’s 1.4 million population living there, the Guardian says.