Anger at claims Lebanese authorities knew of blast danger
BEIRUT: Officials ignored warnings that 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored on the Lebanese capital’s docks were enough to “blow up all of Beirut”.
As the death toll from Wednesday’s apocalyptic blasts climbed to 135, including one Australian, and more than 5000 injured, anger boiled over about what authorities knew and how they failed to act.
Two officials were put under house arrest early on Thursday morning Australian time, as the Lebanese government tried to piece together what went wrong.
It came as children were pulled from the rubble, but there remained grave fears the death toll would rise considerably when recovery teams were able to search the site.
The ammonium nitrate was left on the docks in 2014 when a ship sailing under the Moldovan flag, the Rhosus, was caught in a business dispute.
The ship’s Russian owner Igor Grechushkin abandoned it and the crew, who went on a hunger strike before they were allowed off. It was sailing from Georgia to Mozambique with the cargo, commonly used as a farming fertiliser but also as a base for explosives.
Grechushkin now lives in Cyprus and a Russian TV station claimed that he left the ship and its dangerous cargo “due to the lack of documents and conditions necessary for transportation”.
The report added that heavy fines forced him into bankruptcy. The crew had warned in 2014 that the ship was a “floating bomb”, while Reuters quoted a source saying that warehouse 12, where the chemicals were stored in loose bags, was inspected six months ago. Officials were told to move it because it was so dangerous it would “blow up all of Beirut.”
But “nothing was done”, according to another source. “It is negligence.”
“We requested that it be reexported but that did not happen. We leave it to the experts and those concerned to determine why,” the director general of Lebanese Customs Badri Daher said, according to local broadcaster LBCI.
There are now serious concerns for 300,000 people who have been made homeless. However, people have been offering spare rooms on social media as the country comes together to battle the crisis.
The cost of the damage to buildings was estimated at up to $20bn.