An explosion that occurred on Monday, November 2, 2026, around 7:30 a.m. at the Metafrique Steel facilities in the Bassa industrial zone in Douala, has caused at least four deaths and sixteen seriously burned injuries, according to the governor of the Littoral region, Samuel Dieudonn\u00e9 Ivaha Diboua.<\/p>\n
The rescue teams found the four bodies in the factory while the sixteen injured were evacuated to the Douala General Hospital. The governor indicated that their condition was a cause for serious concern due to the severity of the burns.<\/p>\n
The explosion triggered a fire that emergency services managed to extinguish. Metafrique Steel confirmed that its facilities had been affected and reported human and material damage, without providing a detailed assessment in its statement.<\/p>\n
The company stated that the incident resulted from an external factor, while specifying that the exact causes remain to be determined. The administrative authorities announced the opening of an investigation, and the governor considered that a suspension of activities should be contemplated during the inspections.<\/p>\n
The site had already been affected by a fire on the night of April 30 to May 1, 2026. This previous incident caused at least ten injuries, some of which were critical, and led the company to temporarily suspend its production.<\/p>\n
After his visit to the factory and to the injured, Samuel Dieudonn\u00e9 Ivaha Diboua stated that the safety measures prescribed after previous incidents had not been implemented. Metafrique Steel\u2019s statement did not respond to this accusation and assured that the victims and their families would be supported.<\/p>\n
Metafrique Steel processes iron and steel from ferrous waste in the Bassa industrial zone. The company had not indicated Monday evening how long its activities would be suspended nor provided an updated medical report for the sixteen injured hospitalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The disaster struck on Monday morning at the Metafrique Steel steelworks site in Bassa. An investigation is set to determine the causes, six months after a first fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":533020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"_benews_format":"","_benews_media_url":"","_benews_urgent_until":0,"_benews_essentials":"","_benews_format_auto":"","_benews_nl_alert":false,"_benews_premium":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"pays":[123],"personnalite":[],"class_list":["post-533019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous-news","pays-cameroon"],"acf":{"type_de_publication":"actualite","nom_de_linstitution":"","description_de_linstitution":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533021,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533019\/revisions\/533021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533019"},{"taxonomy":"pays","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pays?post=533019"},{"taxonomy":"personnalite","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personnalite?post=533019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}