Two powerful explosions rocked Tuesday the port of the capital of the country, leaving more than 100 dead and 4,000 wounded, according to a provisional report. The Express makes the point.
Two powerful explosions successive shook Beirut as of late Tuesday afternoon, spreading panic and causing a huge mushroom of smoke in the sky over the lebanese capital. The powerful outbreaks that have rocked the port of the capital have left over 100 people dead and 4,000 wounded, according to a new preliminary assessment prepared on Wednesday by the lebanese Red Cross. The Express train made the point on the situation.
A first explosion followed by another
video footage posted on social networks showed an initial explosion followed by another that caused the huge cloud of smoke. The outbreaks rattled buildings and shattered windows for miles round. “It is a disaster in the inside of the port. There are corpses on the ground. Ambulances take the bodies,” said a soldier on the outskirts of the port.
local media broadcast images of people trapped under the debris, some covered in blood. “I felt like an earthquake, and then after a huge explosion and the window panes are broken. I felt that it was stronger than the explosion at the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, caused by a truck packed with explosives, said a Lebanese in the city centre of Beirut. Cars, with their airbags inflated, but also buses have been abandoned in the middle of several roads. According to witnesses, the outbreaks have been heard up to the coastal city of Larnaca, Cyprus, distant a little more than 200 km of the lebanese coast.
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Many warehouses in the port were devastated, while the floor is littered with broken glass. The port area has been cordoned off by the security forces, which only let the civil defense, ambulances, sirens blaring, and firefighters, according to correspondents of the AFP at the entrance of the port. In the vicinity, damage to, and destruction are important.
“We’ve seen a bit of smoke and then an explosion. And then the fungus. The force of the explosion has propelled us back into the apartment,” said an inhabitant of the district of Manssouriyeh, who witnessed the scene from his balcony, several kilometres from the port.
The port of Beirut, devastated after the two explosions of August 4, 2020
STR / AFP
After the explosions, many residents, including some of the wounded, went to hospital in multiple districts of Beirut. In front of the medical centre Clémenceau, dozens of wounded, including children, sometimes covered with blood, were waiting to be admitted. “This is a disaster in every sense of the term,” lamented the minister of Health, Hamad Hassan, who was interviewed by several television channels while he was visiting a hospital in the capital. “The hospitals of the capital are all full of wounded”, he stressed, calling on them to carry the wounded to facilities in the suburbs.
2750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse
In this context, the Prime minister, Hassan Diab has decreed Wednesday a day of national mourning and has promised that officials should “give account”. The government points the finger at a shipment of ammonium nitrate stored without precautionary measures” on the port. About 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were stored in the warehouse of the port of Beirut, denounced the Prime minister. “It is unacceptable that a cargo of ammonium nitrate, which is estimated at 2750 tons, which is present for six years in a warehouse, without precautionary measures”, he said in front of the superior Council of defence, which held an emergency meeting.
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“It is unacceptable and we can not silence us on this issue,” he added, according to comments reported by a spokesperson in a press conference. Ammonium nitrate is a chemical fertilizer and also a component of explosives. “We will not rest until we will not find the person responsible for what happened to accountability,” promised the Prime minister.
The supreme Council of defence “recommends” to the government to enact the “state of emergency” for two weeks in the city of Beirut. During this period, a “military power supreme will be in charge of all the prerogatives in terms of security”, according to the closing communiqué of the superior Council of defence. The government should hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday.
international Solidarity
many countries have offered help to Lebanon, including France, which sends this Wednesday several tons of medical equipment. The president and Emmanuel Macron has announced on Twitter the sending of a detachment of civil security and of “several tons of medical equipment or medical supplies” in Beirut. This French aid will be sent as soon as this Wednesday by two military aircraft. They take off from Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport in the middle of the day for an arrival in the late afternoon, said the Elysée.
Germany, which has members of the staff of its embassy in Beirut among the injured, has also offered its assistance, just as the United States. But the american president Donald Trump has estimated that the explosions “looked like a terrible attack,” and that of the military experts he had spoken of “the bomb”. “I met with our generals, and it seems that this was not an industrial accident. It seems, according to them, that it was a terrorist attack, it was a bomb,” he told the press during his daily press conference on the new coronavirus.
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The iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has also expressed his country’s support to the people “resilient” in Lebanon. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the great and resilient people of Lebanon,” tweeted the minister of iran. Even Israel has offered Tuesday evening, “a humanitarian aid and medical attention” to its neighbor lebanon, which is technically still at war.
