UK medic saw blast victims horror

Doctors rushed to Temeke Hospital to treat casualties of the explosion

An ammunition dump on the outskirts of the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam has exploded, causing a huge fire and leaving three people dead.

Matt Smith, a medical student from Manchester, England, was on his first day working at Temeke Hospital when the blast victims began to arrive. He described the scene to the BBC News website.

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We felt the explosions in the hospital but it took about half an hour to realise what had happened.

When the first casualties arrived, we received a lot of people who were very shaken up.

All the doctors dropped what they were doing to help.

All the doctors dropped what they were doing to help Matt Smith, Temeke Hospital

There were children coming in with school uniforms on.

There were a few people with explosion injuries. Some had severe head injuries.

I also know of at least one amputation carried out on a casualty.

I'm told that a lot of people were injured evacuating the area. I heard one of those people died.

And there were a lot of people admitted with things like asthma.

Difficult circumstances

Doctors have arrived from all over Dar es Salaam and the doctors who have been working for the last 10 hours are volunteering to stay.

I've been told to stop working now - I'm too shattered to carry on.

But I walked the wards and things are certainly a lot calmer now than they were this morning.

Today is actually my first day at work.

I have been in Tanzania four weeks, working at another hospital, but this was my first day at Temeke.

I'm here working with two other medical students from Manchester.

Temeke Hospital is only a small district hospital and the staff performed admirably despite extremely difficult circumstances that cannot be planned for.